The water about Blake’s Point is never still. It is as if some great green serpent of the sea lies stretched among the rocks and keeps it in perpetual motion by waving his tail. It was not still when Florence arrived.
“Just right,” she whispered, as if afraid the fishes might hear. “Rough enough for a little excitement, and no real danger.”
Casting a shining lure into the water, she watched the line play out as she rowed.
A big wave lifted her high. Still the line played out. The boat sank low. She checked the line. Then, watching the rocks that she might not come too close and snag them, she rowed away.
For some time she circled out along the shoals, then back again. She had begun to believe there were no fish, and was musing on other things, phantom violins, black schooners, gray wolves, Old Uncle Ned, when, with a suddenness that was startling, her reel began to sing.
Dropping her oars, she seized the pole and began reeling in rapidly. Next moment she tossed a fine three pound trout into her boat. “You get ’em quick or not at all,” Swen had said to her. She had got this one “quick.”
An hour later four fine trout lay in the stern of her boat. “Enough,” she breathed. “We eat tonight, and so does Dizzy.”
The day was still young. She had not meant to visit Duncan’s Bay, but now the place called to her.
Swen’s short, powerful rifle lay in the prow of her boat. Why had she brought it? Perhaps she could not tell. Now she was glad it was there.
“Go ashore on Duncan’s Bay,” she told herself. “Go hunting phantoms and, perhaps, a gray wolf or two. Wouldn’t mind shooting them, the murderers, not a bit!”