“They’re here,” whispered Harvey. “Get out the lines.” He filled the dipper once more and threw it broadcast, but this time nearer the boats. They threw out the lines, baited with the shining pieces of flounder.
It seemed as though every bait was seized at once; for, in a moment, every boy was pulling in, and a half-dozen mackerel came over the gunwales together.
They baited up anew, then, knowing that no bait serves so well for mackerel as a piece cut from the under side of the fish, itself. This, white and shiny, and pierced twice through the tough skin with the barb of the hook, would indeed often answer several times in succession, without rebaiting.
They rigged two lines for each fisherman, tying an end of each line to the gunwale, so that, when a bite was felt, one of the lines could be dropped while the fish on the other was hauled aboard. The mackerel, indeed, bit so ravenously that it was hardly necessary to stop to see if a fish was hooked, but only to catch up one line, as quick as a fish had been removed from the other and that line thrown out, and haul in again. Nine times out of ten there would be a mackerel on the hook. Standing up in the dories, to work to better advantage, they were soon half knee-deep in the fish.
“We’ll fill the boats, if they keep this up,” said Harvey. “Tom, you’re nearest the oars; just row back toward the yacht, easily, and we’ll toll them up that way.”
He threw out more bait, as Tom worked the dory back, and the whole school followed, hungrily. In a few minutes the boys had climbed aboard the yachts and were fishing from them, to better advantage.
A half-hour went by, and the fish had not ceased biting. The boys were drenched to the skin from their hips to their feet, with the drippings from the wet lines; for, in their haste, they had not stopped to don their oilskin breeches.
“We ought to have known better, with all the experience we have had this summer,” said Henry Burns; “but never mind, we’ll make enough out of this catch to buy new clothes, if the wind only serves us, later.”
By the end of an hour, the sun was up and gleaming across the water.
“They’re likely to leave us soon, now,” remarked Harvey; but, oddly enough, the fish still remained about the boats in such numbers that the water seemed fairly alive with them. However, with the warmth of the sun’s rays, the voracity of the mackerel abated somewhat, and they began pulling them in more slowly.