“A hundred yards,” he announced as he felt a threaded mark wheel from under his thumb. Then: “A hundred and fifty. I’m afraid it’s a shark.” As he spoke the fish leaped clear of the water, a spot of molten silver, and fell back in a sparkling blue spray. “It’s a rock,” he added. He stopped the run momentarily; the rod bent perilously double, but the fish halted. Woolfolk reeled in smoothly, but another rush followed, as strong as the first. A long, equal struggle ensued, the thin line was drawn as rigid as metal, the rod quivered and arched. Once the rockfish was close enough to be clearly distinguishable—strongly built, heavy-shouldered, with black stripes drawn from gills to tail. But he was off again with a short, blundering rush.
“If you will hold the rod,” Woolfolk directed his companion, “I’ll gaff him.” She took the rod while he bent over the wharf’s side. The fish, on the surface of the water, half turned; and, striking the gaff through a gill, Woolfolk swung him up on the boarding.
“There,” he pronounced, “are several dinners. I’ll carry him to your kitchen.”
“Nicholas would do it, but he’s away,” she told him; “and my father is not strong enough. That’s a leviathan.”
John Woolfolk placed a handle through the rockfish’s gills, and, carrying it with an obvious effort, he followed her over a narrow, trampled path through the rasped palmettos. They approached the dwelling from behind the orange grove; and, coming suddenly to the porch, surprised an incredibly thin, grey man in the act of lighting a small stone pipe with a reed stem. He was sitting, but, seeing Woolfolk, he started sharply to his feet, and the pipe fell, shattering the bowl.
“My father,” the woman pronounced: “Lichfield Stope.”
“Millie,” he stuttered painfully, “you know—I—strangers—”
John Woolfolk thought, as he presented himself, that he had never before seen such an immaterial living figure. Lichfield Stope was like the shadow of a man draped with unsubstantial, dusty linen. Into his waxen face beat a pale infusion of blood, as if a diluted wine had been poured into a semi-opaque goblet; his sunken lips puffed out and collapsed; his fingers, dust-colored like his garb, opened and shut with a rapid, mechanical rigidity.
“Father,” Millie Stope remonstrated, “you must manage yourself better. You know I wouldn’t bring any one to the house who would hurt us. And see—we are fetching you a splendid rockfish.”
The older man made a convulsive effort to regain his composure.