“Don’t hurry him!” Jack urged as his chum began impatiently to try to haul in.
Suddenly the line began to slip through George’s wet hands. The gamy fish had made a prodigious rush, but its captor soon managed to check the runaway, and then the real battle began. Foot by foot the mate drew his prey toward him, and foot by foot the prey contested the struggle, until its strength gave out. Then, for a while, as George brought the line in more quickly, he half feared the fish must have got off the hook. He had hauled it within four or five yards of the sloop when the captive began to show fight afresh, and made a mad dash down into the depths. There was less “punch” in it now, however, and the final effort did not last long. Soon its bright silvery belly showed clearly in the water as George drew it nearer. Jack leaned over the side with the boat-hook, ready to hoist it by the gills.
“It’s a pretty good size—for a sardine,” he commented dryly. “Keep that line tight, chump! There!”
The boat-hook was firmly caught in the fish’s gills, and with a comical expression of wonderment the mate saw his prize drawn inboard.
“Why—why, it is a bluefish, I suppose?” he said, surveying the beautiful creature now flopping about in the bottom of the cockpit. “I’ve never seen one quite so big as that.”
“It’s twelve or thirteen pounds of bluefish, all in one piece,” replied Jack, admiringly. “They don’t run to that size very often round about here. You’re a hero! I don’t believe that when Cap’n Crumbie starts stuffing the summer visitors with his yarns he ever pretends to have hauled in a bluefish any larger than that. Bait up, and have another go.”
But George’s catch had evidently been a solitary straggler, or the shoal had gone off the feed, for though the sloop sailed to and fro for three quarters of an hour longer, the bait danced astern unmolested.
“Let’s try for cod,” Jack suggested at length, when it became apparent that they were wasting their time. Away went the anchor, in fifteen fathoms of water, and the lads dangled hook and line over the side patiently for another fifteen minutes.
“Mr. Codfish isn’t at home, either,” Jack declared, beginning to wind up his line. “We’ll try a little farther off. Up with the mud-hook, George.”
Half a mile farther to the south they again tried, and not even a sculpin rewarded their efforts. Jack looked up at the blue sky and glanced further out to sea.