Code threw over his little three-fluked anchor. Then he baited his two hooks with bits of tentacle and threw them overboard. With the big rectangular reel in his left hand, he unwound as the leads drew down until they fetched bottom and the line sagged. Unreeling a couple more fathoms of line, he cast the reel aside.
Then he hauled his leads up until he judged them to be some six feet off the bottom and waited.
Almost instantly there was a sharp jerk, and Code, with the skill of the trained fisherman, instantly responded to it with a savage pull on the line and a rapid hand-over-hand as he looped it into the dory. The fish had struck on. The tough cord sung against the gunnel, and at times it was all the skipper could do to bring up his prize, for the great cod darted here and there, dove, rushed, and struggled to avert the end.
Thirty fathoms is a hundred and eighty feet, and, with a huge and desperate fish disputing every inch of the way, it becomes a seemingly endless labor. 102 But at last Code, straining his eyes over the side, caught a glimpse of quick circles of white in the green and reached for the maul that was stuck under a thwart.
Two more heaves and the cod, open-mouthed, thrashed on the surface. A smart rap on the head with the maul and he came into the dory quietly. There were little pink crabs sticking to him and he did not seem as fat as he should, although he topped the fifty-pound mark.
“Lousy!” said Code. “Lousy and hungry! It’s good fishing.”
With a short, stout stick at hand he wrenched the hook out of the cod’s mouth, baited up, and cast again. The descending bait was rushed and seized. This time both hooks bore victims.
When there were no speckled cod on the hooks there were silvery hake, velvety black pollock, beautiful scarlet sea-perch that look like little old men, and an occasional ugly dogfish with his Chinese jade eyes.
When the dogfish came the men pulled up their anchors and rowed a mile or so away, for where the dogfish pursues all others fly. He has the shape and traits of his merciless giant brother, the tiger-shark, with the added menace of a horn full of poison in the middle of his back instead of a dorsal fin; an evil, 103 curved horn, the thrust of which can be nearly fatal to a man.
The bottom of the dory became covered with a flooring of liquid silver bodies that twined together and rolled with the roll of the dory.