“There should be a rockfish in the pass,” he pronounced.
“What good if there is?” she returned. “I couldn’t possibly throw out there. And if I could, why disturb a rock with this?” She shook the short awkward rod, the knotted line.
He privately acknowledged the palpable truth of her objections, and rose.
“I’ve some fishing things on the ketch,” he said, moving away. He blew shrilly on a whistle from the beach, and Halvard dropped over the Gar’s side into the tender.
Woolfolk was soon back on the wharf, stripping the canvas cover from the long cane tip of a fishing rod brilliantly wound with green and vermilion, and fitting it into a dark, silver-capped butt. He locked a capacious reel into place, and, drawing a thin line through agate guides, attached a glistening steel leader and chained hook. Then, adding a freely swinging lead, he picked up the small mullet that lay by his companion.
“Does that have to go?” she demanded. “It’s such a slim chance, and it is my only mullet.”
He ruthlessly sliced a piece from the silvery side; and, rising and switching his reel’s gear, he cast. The lead swung far out across the water and fell on the farther side of the channel.
“But that’s dazzling!” she exclaimed; “as though you had shot it out of a gun.”
He tightened the line, and sat with the rod resting in a leather socket fastened to his belt.
“Now,” she stated, “we will watch at the vain sacrifice of an only mullet.”