Many a noble fish escaped; many a line and hook snapped in the warfare. Sometimes a much larger fish would take hold, and two of us would have to pull on the line stretched like wire. During the season we took a seven-pounder, one of eight, and one of ten pounds, and Captain Mugford, alone on the rocks, one stormy morning, when we boys were in school, captured a royal fellow of twelve pounds, and brought it for our admiring gaze as we went to dinner. Mr Clare promised to beat that, but he never did.
One Saturday afternoon, about the last of August, just after a somewhat heavy gale, which had been blowing for a couple of days, we all repaired to Bass Rocks, though the sky was drizzling yet, and the spray of the waves dashed at every blow clear over our stand.
It was apparently a splendid time for our friends, the labrus, but we did not get a bite. We persevered, however, fresh baiting the hooks, and throwing out again and again, with not a fin to flash after them through the curdled waters.
Harry Higginson, having been very unlucky before this, losing several strong lines, had provided himself this time with one which, he said, could hold a hundred-pounder—the line consisting of two thick flaxen lines plaited together. He had it rigged on his pole. Grown careless from the ill-luck we had met, he at length let his bait sink to the bottom, about thirty yards from the rocks, and got talking with the Captain, who had given up fishing, and, with his sou’wester pulled about his ears, was taking a comfortable pipe in a crevice of the biggest rock.
Suddenly I heard a reel go clork—cle–erk cleerk! and saw Harry’s pole fall from his hands to the rock. He seized it in a second, but as he stopped the revolving of the reel, the pole bent, and he pulled back on it—Snap! It was gone in the middle of the second joint. Of course the line remained, and that he commenced pulling in, bestowing the while some pretty hard expressions on his bad luck, for it really seemed as if the once-hooked fish had gone off in safety. About ten yards of the line came in slack, and then it stopped.
“Fast to a rock! What luck!” cried Harry, and then he commenced to jerk.
As he turned to look at us, with an expression of sarcastic indifference, I saw the line straightening out again in a steady, slow way, as if it was attached to an invisible canal-boat.
“Hold fast,” I cried; “look! you have got something. What can it be?” saying which, Harry commenced to pull, but in vain—the prey went ahead.
Captain Mugford had taken the pipe from his mouth as his attention was fastened by the strange manoeuvres of Harry’s game. Things having come to such a bewildering pass, he put up his pipe and, shaking the folds of the sou’wester from about his head, sprung forward and took hold of the line with Harry, but it still ran out through their hands.
“Seventeen seventy-six! what a whopper,” exclaimed the Captain. “We must let go another anchor—eh, Harry?”