“Thought you wasn’t coming, lad,” said Fisherman Dick. “Here, just you ketch hold o’ yon basket, and let’s get to work.”
Morton seized the basket of bait, and together they walked to the very end of the pier, at one corner of which was a gangway and some steps, down which they went to a platform of open beams, moist with spray, and only about a foot above the water now the tide was high, the promenade forming the ceiling above their heads.
It was very dark, and the damp, salt smell of the weed that hung to the piles was floating around, while the misty spray every now and then moistened their hands and faces. On all sides huge square wooden piles rose up, looking grim and strange in the gloom, and before them the star-spangled sea heaved and sank, and heaved and sighed and whispered in amongst the woodwork, every now and then seeming to give a hungry smack as if the waves were the lips of some monstrous mouth, trying to seize upon the two fishers for its prey.
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Dick Miggles: “Sea’s just right, and the fish’ll bite like anything. We ought to get ten shillings’ worth to-night. There you are; go ahead.”
Dick had been busy unwinding a line, whose hooks he had already baited; and then, for the next quarter of an hour they were busy catching and hauling in whiting and large dabs, and every now and then a small conger, the basket filling rapidly.
Then, all at once, the fish ceased biting, and they sat waiting and feeling the lines, trying to detect a touch.
“Some one coming,” said Dick suddenly, in a low whisper. “What’s he want to-night?”
“Sh!” whispered back Morton. “Don’t speak, or I shall be found out.”
“Right,” answered Dick in the same low tone; and as they sat there in the darkness with the water lapping just beneath them, and a wave coming in among the piles every now and then with a hiss and a splash, they could hear the slow, firm tread of some one coming down the pier, right to the end, to stand there as if listening, quite still above their heads.
All at once the night-breeze wafted to them the scent of a good cigar, and they knew that whoever it was must be smoking.