“That you can enjoy the fresh air so much. It shows that you must be better. Think you can hold the line if I get one ready?”
“Of course,” said Fitz, rather contemptuously.
“All right, then.”
Poole turned away and knelt upon the deck, laughing to himself the while, as he thought that if a big fish were hooked the invalid would soon find out the difference. And then the boy’s fingers moved pretty quickly as he took out his junk-knife and cut a long narrow strip from the piece of fatty pork-rind with which the cook had supplied him.
Through one end of this he passed the point of the hook, and then brought it back to the same side by which it had entered, so that a strip about six inches long and one wide hung down from the barbed hook. The next process was to unwind twenty or thirty yards of the line with its leaden sinker, and then drop lead and bait overboard, running out the line till the bait was left about fifty yards astern, but not to sink far, for there was wind enough to carry the schooner along at a pretty good pace, trailing the bait twirling round and round behind, and bearing no small resemblance to a small, quickly-swimming fish, the white side of the bait alternating with the dull grey of the rind, and giving it a further appearance of life and movement.
“There you are,” said Poole, passing the line into the midshipman’s hands. “I will unwind some more, have fished like this before, haven’t you?”
“Only a little for whiting and codlings,” was the reply. “I never got hold of anything big. I suppose we may get a tidy one here?”
“Oh yes; and they are tremendously strong.”
“Not so strong but what I can hold them, I dare say,” said Fitz confidently.
But his confidence was not shared by his companion, who unwound the line till there was no more upon the frame, and then gave the end two or three turns about one of the belaying-pins, leaving a good many rings of loose line upon deck.