She came to a balk of timber lying close to the water’s edge, stood by it for a moment, and then sat down, nursing her knees and contemplating the scene before her—the sun-smitten sea looking fresh, as though this were the first morning that had ever shone on the world, the white gulls flying against the blue of the sky, the gasoline launches and sailing boats anchored out from the shore and only waiting the boatmen, the gaffers, the men with rods, and the resumption of the eternal business—Fish.
The sight of them raised no desire in the mind of the gazer; she was tired of fish. A lover of the sea, a fearless sailor and able to handle a boat as well as a man, she was still weary of the eternal subject of weights and measures; she had lived in an atmosphere of fish for a month, and, not being much of a fisherwoman, she was beginning to want a change, or, at all events, some new excitement. She was to get it.
A crunching of the shingle behind her made her turn. It was Aransas Joe, the first boatman out that morning, moving like a seal to the sea and laden with a huge can of bait, a spare spar, two sculls, and a gaff.
Anything more unlovely than Aransas Joe in contrast with the fair morning and the fresh figure of the girl, it would be hard to imagine. Wall-eyed, weather-stained, fish-scaled, and moving like a plantigrade, he was a living epitome of longshore life and an object lesson in what it can do for a man.
Joe never went fishing; the beach was his home, and sculling fishermen to their yawls his business. The Culpeppers were well known to him.
“Joe,” said the girl, “you’re just the person I want. Come and row me out to our yawl.”
“Where’s your gaffer an’ your engine man?” asked Joe.
“I don’t want them. I can look after the engine myself. I’m not going fishing.”
“Not goin’ fishin’,” said Joe, putting down his can of bait and shifting the spar to his left shoulder; “not goin’ fishin’! Then what d’you want doin’ with the yawl?”