Sharks you will find nearly everywhere, but, and this was a fact unknown to Harman, the sharks, as compared to the other big fish, are few and far between.
It was getting toward sundown, when the schooner, under a freshening wind, came along the seaward side of Santa Catalina Island. The island on this side shows two large bays, separated by a rounded promontory. In the northernmost of these bays they dropped anchor close in shore, in fifteen-fathom water.
II
At dawn next morning they got the gear ready. The Chinese crew, during the night, had caught a plentiful supply of fish for bait, and, as the sun was looking over the coast hills, they hauled up the anchor and put out for the kelp beds.
There are two great kelp beds off the seaward coast of Santa Catalina, an inner and an outer. Two great submarine forests more thickly populated than any forest on land. This is the haunt of the Black Sea Bass that run in weight up to four hundred pounds, the Ribbon Fish, the Frogfish, and the Kelpfish, that builds its nest just as a bird builds, crabs innumerable, and sea creatures that have never yet been classified or counted.
They tied up to the kelp, and the fishing began, while the sun blazed stronger upon the water and the morning mists died out of the cañons of the island.
The shark hooks baited and lowered were relieved of their bait, but not by sharks; all sorts of bait snatchers inhabit these waters, and they were now simply chewing the fish off the big shark hooks.
Getting on for eleven o’clock, Blood, who had been keeping a restless eye seaward, left his line and went forward with Ginnell’s glass, which he levelled at the horizon.
A sail on the sea line to the northwest had attracted his attention an hour ago, and the fact that it had scarcely altered its position, although there was a six-knot breeze blowing, had roused his curiosity.