“You won’t catch anything there,” said Isadore.
“I’ll gag you if you don’t shut up,” promised Tom.
Suddenly his line straightened out. The hook seemed to be sucked right down into a hole between the rocks, and the reel began to whir. It stopped and Tom tried it.
“Pshaw! that ain’t a bite,” whispered Isadore.
At Tom’s first attempt to reel in, the fish that had seized his hook started–for Spain! At least, it shot seaward, and the boy knew that Spain was about the nearest dry land if the fish kept on in that direction.
“A strike!” Tom gasped and let his reel sing for a moment or two. Then, when the drag of the line began to tell on the bass, he carefully wound in some of it. The fish turned and finally ran toward the rocks once more. Then Tom wound up as fast as he could, trying to keep the line taut.
“He’ll tangle you all up, Tommy,” declared Bob, unable, like Isadore, to keep entirely still.
Tom was flushed and excited, but said never a word. He played the big bass with coolness after all, and finally tired it out, keeping it clear of the tangles of weed down under the rock, and drew it forth–a plump, flopping, gasping victim.
Bob and Isadore were then eager to do as well and began whipping the water about the rocks with more energy than skill. Tom, delighted with his first kill, ran over the rocks with the fish to show it to the girls. As he surmounted the ridge of the rocky cape he suddenly saw Nita, the runaway, and Jack Crab, in a little cove right below him. The girl and the fisherman had come around to this side of the inlet, away from Phineas and the other girls.
They did not see Tom behind and above them. Nita was not fishing, and Crab had unfolded a paper and was showing it to her. At this distance the paper seemed like a page torn from some newspaper, and there were illustrations as well as reading text upon the sheet which Crab held before the strange girl’s eyes.