"This man was a big Chicago importer—look out, you've got another bass—and he was in New York at the time of the fire—heard his warehouses were threatened and bought trainloads of stuff and rushed it through. It arrived while the other stuff was still smoking, and he made much more than he— My dear sir, that's the best fish of the evening, let me look at him."
Clark laid the twitching body of a bass on the teak deck, while the big man came aft, trailing his bait and slowly reeling up his line. As the minnow glimmered in towards the yacht's black side, there came a heavy plunge, the bishop's rod bent double, and the line sang off his reel. He was a famous fisherman, and Clark watched him admiringly. To every ounce of pliant bamboo on his six ounce rod there was, down in the brown water, a pound of savagely fighting weight. Deeper went the big fish and further, but ever the taut line yielded by fractions, and the nearly doubled rod kept up a steady insidious strain. As the bass dashed back, the bishop recovered his nearly spent line while his lips pressed tight and the light of battle shone in his large eyes. For a quarter of an hour the fight lasted, till the great fish floundered once or twice with heavy weariness on the surface, and the angler worked him toward the yacht. Then a bare brown arm shot a landing net underneath his horny shoulder and, with a dexterous twist, the Indian pilot landed him on the deck in a thumping tangle of line, leader and net.
"And that," said the bishop with a deep sigh of content, "will do.
We've got supper and breakfast as well."
The night deepened, and in the little saloon host and guest sat down to a supper of fried fish, blueberries and cream. The small, red curtains were drawn, and over the tiny fireplace a binnacle lamp glowed softly. Forward in the bows, the Scotch engineer and the Indian pilot sat conversing in deliberate monosyllables, and in the east a horned moon floated just clear of the ragged tops of encircling pine trees. Clark ate slowly and felt the burden slipping from his shoulders. It was a strange sensation. Across the narrow table towered the bishop, the genius of the place. He was still reminiscent of American experiences and talked as talks a man who is comfortably sure of himself and his companion.
"I don't believe I have any very close personal friends," said Clark presently. "I've moved about too quickly to make them. One meets people in the way of work, and so far as my own employees are concerned, I see them chiefly through their work. I can't let the personal element intrude."
The bishop smiled, remembering something similar he had said himself. "Well, I must say I'm particularly drawn to Americans. Perhaps it's because they suit the Irish, but I seem to find in them a certain intellectual generosity one recognizes at once and appreciates. There aren't so many fences to climb over. And, besides, they appear to understand my cloth."
"Yes?" Clark looked up, keenly interested. He had not thought much about the clerical profession.
"It's quite true. They realize that a parson is a man of like predilections and impulses and weaknesses with themselves, and that a cassock does not stifle the natural and healthy ambitions of the male mammal. Nothing is more trying for the cleric than to be put aside as though he were some emasculated ascetic who was unattracted by merely natural things."
"I hadn't thought of that."
"Very few people have, except the cleric; and he thinks of it a good deal. There is even the tendency to believe that the parson, because he is a spiritually minded man, is incapable of horse sense in practical and public affairs. By the way, don't you smoke?"