“Lost him,” she all but sobbed.
“But no.” As she reeled rapidly in, there came another tug. Not so strong now. She had no difficulty pulling the catch toward her.
“Tangled round some kelp before,” she told herself disappointedly. “Only a small one after all.”
That she was partly wrong, she knew in a moment. A broad spot of white appeared in the dark waters beneath her, and a moment later she was landing a halibut weighing perhaps twenty-five pounds.
“Oh, you beauty!” she exclaimed. “Now they can’t say I’m not a fisherman!”
The two kinds of fish most relished by the coast of Maine people are sword fish and young halibut. Pearl’s mother would be delighted. Don and some of the other boys were off on a long fishing cruise. There had been no really fine fish in the house for more than a week.
For some little time, while she regained her poise, Pearl sat admiring her catch.
“I got you,” she said at last.
Then of a sudden her face clouded. “After all,” she told herself, “it’s nothing, catching a fish. The grand old times are gone. Nothing ever really happens. If only I’d lived in the days of great, great, great grandfather Josia Bracket. Those were the brave days!”
As she closed her eyes she seemed to see Casco Bay as it had been in the pioneer times when the first Bracket landed there.