My attention was chiefly occupied watching the bait and the water between it and the shore on which white-crested waves were breaking; but now and then I looked into a pool at my side. Bright-coloured anemones starred its sides, delicatest seaweeds spread their fronds in the limpid water, and a small fish called a pulcronack rested motionless between two rosy lichen-like patches, apparently intent on something, or as if it were listening for the steps of the incoming tide.
A buzzing noise drew my eyes for a moment to a green-backed fly that had discovered and settled on the silvery eel, and when I looked at the sea again two dark objects were coming towards me slowly, as they followed the line of the broken water in which they were now and again lost to sight. Owing to the glare I could not at first make the fish out distinctly, though they were swimming over the whitest of sands; but when they came within a rod’s length of the bait, I saw what monsters they were, and instinctively uncoiled some slack line from the wooden frame on which it was wound. The bass, for such they were, were swimming about midway between the surface and the bait, and when a few yards from the luscious morsel, their heads went down, and the next instant only inches separated them from the liver. What exactly happened at this critical moment is uncertain, owing to a slight ripple that disturbed the surface. I could see their blurred dark forms near the rocks, and a slight twitching shook the line, which I held loosely between my nervous fingers for fear of alarming them. Tout vient, etc., I thought, expecting to have the line wrenched through my hands, both of which were ready to grip it as the fish should rush seawards. However, it was not destined that I should land a bass that afternoon, for presently the stately fish moved off in the direction of the point, the bigger one in front; and a more dignified procession of two a chagrined spectator never beheld. I suppose their suspicion had been aroused, though there was nothing to suggest it, so deliberate were their movements. This gave me time to grasp my rod and swing the sand-eel for a cast before the leading fish showed beyond a conical rock that momentarily hid him. Crouching, lest he should catch sight of me, I managed to drop the bait in front of and a little beyond him, and, allowing it to sink, drew it rapidly through the water so that it passed within a foot of his nose. It would be difficult to imagine anything more irresistible for a fish than that silvery bait, the spin of which, though I ought not to say so, might have satisfied a Thames trout! Did the bass make a rush at it? No, it simply swerved a little, and swam away in the most leisurely fashion, the smaller fish following majestically in its wake. They kept their distance as truly as two torpedo boats, and moved as if directed by a single mind.
Let those who think that all sea-fish are easily caught, try their skill and their patience at the Land’s End. I venture to say that, the grey mullet and the Thames trout excepted, no fish is more difficult to capture in clear water than the bass, and that the salmon is a fool to it. To recapitulate my attempts: I had failed in the strong tidal current near the Longships and the Cowloe rocks; I had hooked and lost a monster in the Vrose off Tol-Pedn-Penwith; and my experience when fishing from Roarer Point would have tried the patience of that famous rock fisherman, St Levan himself.
I was not, however, at the end of my resources, for I could improve on the fineness of my tackle. Hitherto I had used single salmon-gut. I now resolved, though not without serious misgiving, to substitute a sea-trout cast, and, as the next best time to the grey of early dawn—an hour which has no great charm for me—to fish under cover of night.
The spot I chose was near where the small stream from Vellandreath runs over the beach, in which, except after heavy rains, it loses itself just before reaching high-water mark. I was there an hour before sundown. My hook baited with cuttle-fish lay a yard or two beyond the broken water. As the tide rose, I moved up the beach and pulled the bait a little nearer in. There was no sign of any fish, but I was hopeful of success when the golden track across the ocean should disappear and the light become sombre. At length the sun dipped below the horizon, the fires it had awakened in the windows of the cottages died away, and the curve of sand lost its warm colouring. With the paling in the west, first the evening star and then the others appeared, the fishing-village twinkled with glow-worm lights, and the Longships and the Seven Stones’ lightship exchanged their nightly greetings across the submerged land of Lyonnesse. When the bells of Sennen ceased ringing, there was scarcely any sound save the murmur of the waves, which broke in lines of phosphorescence on the long strand. Now and then I pulled in my line to see that the bait was free from seaweed; at times I followed a light out at sea, where some steamer moved in the darkness. Thus the hours passed; and at eleven o’clock, despairing of success, I was on the point of going to my lodging. It wanted yet half an hour to high water, however, and I resolved to stay on.
At irksome times like this one’s thoughts are apt to stray, and a straw may give them direction. What may have suggested the train of thought, unless it was the tinkle of the rivulet beside me, I cannot say, but my mind reverted to the part the sands of Whitsand Bay have played in history. Here, three centuries ago, the Spaniard landed and burnt the mill at Vellandreath; here landed Perkin Warbeck, on his ill-starred expedition; here Stephen; here John, on his return from Ireland; here Athelstan; here, if tradition be true, those heathen hordes whom King Arthur and his knights overthrew on Vellandrucher moor; here were drawn up the galleys. . . .
My historical reverie was interrupted by a slight tug at the line held loosely in my hand, a tug followed by the drawing of the slack through my fingers. A bass—it is his way—was running out to sea with the bait in his mouth. At last! I had jumped to my feet on feeling the fish, and when the loose line was used up, I suddenly raised the point of the rod—a sixteen-foot salmon-rod—and drove the hook home. What a rush the fish made! I put on every ounce of strain I dared, considering the fineness of the cast, but it seemed to have little or no effect on the fish, which kept going seawards. I could tell its whereabouts during the first part of the rush by the jet of phosphorescent water that spurted from the line, but now I could see nothing except the dark expanse with its silvery fringe. If the tackle held, I knew the bass could count on nothing in its favour; for the moorings of the boat and of the storepots were far outside the limit of my hundred yards of line, and there was no wreckage now, the fishermen having cleared it away for the sake of the mullet and pilchard seines. To husband the line left on the reel, I advanced as far as I dared into the water, my feet sinking deep in the loose sand. I was rather at a loss to know how to act for the best; whether to continue the steady strain to the last, or give the fish the butt before the line was run out. To stand there and be smashed would be ignominious; so, come what might, I determined to take the offensive. Grasping the greenheart and the line in both hands, I brought the point of the rod back over my shoulder slowly, to avoid a jerk, putting on all the strain I could. Either the fish must yield or the tackle break. There was a violent struggle, in which the top joint played an important part, and then suddenly the tension relaxed, and I feared—in fact, had little doubt—that the gut had snapped, or possibly the hook torn away. Winding up as quickly as possible, I had recovered some twenty yards when, to my joy, the reel screamed again. A second time I applied the butt, and then kept working the fish in. Now he would swim to my left, now to the right, but I could not see the wave which I feel sure he was raising. With much difficulty, for he fought all the way, I brought him to within a few yards of the breakers. How he struggled to maintain his ground there! evidently regarding the broken water as a zone of the greatest danger. After a time I thought I might venture to haul him in. But no, he would not consent to that. Of his own free will he had for many summers sought the shallows, even foraged amongst the breakers; but there was a good reason why he should shun them now. Once I had him just beyond the faintly gleaming arch of a wave, though I could not distinguish the fish, but only the place where he was struggling inside rings of incandescent silver. At last his strength was spent, and I succeeded in dragging him into the grip of a wave which tumbled him half-way up the shelving beach. With a great effort I extricated my legs from the quicksand, and throwing my rod aside, rushed at the fish as the backwash carried him down. I got a hold of him, but lost it, the prickly dorsal fin wounding my hand badly; then the next wave, which nearly swept me off my feet—in my desperation I had followed the fish—washed him in, and though half-blinded by the spray, I succeeded in rolling him on to the dry sand.
I have killed many bass since, but none so heavy—he weighed fifteen pounds four ounces—none which made such a gallant fight. It is true that they were landed under more cheerful conditions, for it must be owned that that night’s fishing on the edge of the Atlantic was weird and lonely.