Jim Spurling, Fisherman Part 13

In bad humor with himself and things in general, he scrambled up and took his place back of the empty tub. Jim sheered the _Barracouta_ off.

"Put on your nippers! If you don't your hands will be raw in a little while."

Percy thrust his fingers through the white woolen doughnuts, grasped the trawl, and began dragging it in over the roller. He made slow, awkward work of it. Jim watched him with ill-suppressed impatience, keeping up a constant stream of necessary counsel.

"Careful! Don't jerk so, or you'll catch your hooks in the gunwale.

There's a good-sized one! Don't try to lift him aboard without the gaff.

Press your hook down and back! Don't yank it sideways like that; you'll only hook him harder. Coil that line away more evenly, or we'll have a bad mess when we come to bait up. Don't lose that fellow! There he goes!

Be more careful of the next one!"

Needful though it was, this quickfire of advice rasped on Percy's temper. The unaccustomed work tired him badly. He was soon conscious of a pain in his shoulders and across the back of his neck; his wrists ached. Every now and then the hard, wiry line slipped off the nippers and sawed across his smarting fingers or palms. But pride kept him doggedly pulling.

A dozen hake of various sizes lay behind him in the pen when a flat, kite-shaped fish, four feet long, with a caricature of a human face beneath its head, came scaling up through the water.

"What's that?" he gasped in amazement.

"Skate!"

"Shall I keep him?"

"Keep him? No! Unless you want to eat him yourself."

Bunglingly Percy tried to dismiss his unwelcome catch, but he made slow work of extricating the deeply swallowed hook. Jim had stopped the _Barracouta_ a few feet off. With the agony that an expert feels at the unskilful butchery of a task by an amateur, he watched his mate's awkward attempts. At last he could stand it no longer.

"Come aboard the sloop, Whittington," he ordered. "I'll finish pulling the trawl."

Percy obeyed sullenly. He had almost reached his limit of physical endurance, and he was only too glad of relief for his smarting skin and aching muscles. Fishing was a miserable business, and he wanted no part of it; on that he was fully decided. But even if a job is unpleasant, a man would rather resign than be discharged. Jim's abruptness hurt his pride; the slight rankled.

From the _Barracouta_ he somewhat enviously watched Spurling deftly unhook the skate. The remainder of the trawl was pulled in in silence.

Percy kept the sloop at a distance that discouraged speech, closing the gap only when Jim signaled that he wished to discharge his cargo. By ten o'clock the last hook was reached, anchor and buoy taken aboard, and the _Barracouta_, with two thousand pounds of fish heaped in her kids and towing astern in the dory, headed for Tarpaulin Island.

The trip home was a glum one. Two or three times Jim tried to open a conversation, but Percy responded only in monosyllables. He was tired and sleepy, and felt generally out-of-sorts. So Jim gave it up and let him alone.

They reached Sprowl's Cove at noon. Budge and Throppy had returned some time before from pulling the lobster-traps; Jim inspected their catch.

"About forty pounds," was his estimate. "Rather slim; but then the traps were down only about twelve hours. We'll do better after we get fairly started. I'm not going trawling to-morrow; so the whole crowd can make a lobstering trip in the _Barracouta_. Now let's have dinner. This afternoon we'll all turn to and dress fish."

Percy filed a mental negative to the last statement. He had decided that, so far at least as Tarpaulin Island was concerned, his fishing days were over. Nevertheless, he ate a good dinner.

At one o'clock the four academy boys rowed out to the _Barracouta_. All but Percy had on their oilskin ap.r.o.ns, or "petticoats."

"Where's your regimentals, Whittington?" asked Lane.

"I'm only going to look on this afternoon," replied Percy.

The other three exchanged surprised glances, but made no comments. On board the sloop Jim was soon busily engaged in demonstrating the process of dressing fish. Budge and Throppy learned quickly. Percy's refusal to take part in the work did not prevent him from watching it with interest from the cabin roof.

The fish were split and cleaned. Their heads were cut off and thrown into a barrel, to serve later as lobster bait, and the livers tossed into pails. Their "sounds," the membrane running along the backbone, were removed and placed in a box. After the bodies had been rinsed in a tub of water, and the backbones cut out, they were flung into the dory, taken ash.o.r.e and plunged into another tub of water, and then salted down in hogsheads. Three pairs of hands made speedy work.

"What do you do with those?"

Percy pointed to the pails containing the livers.

"Leave 'em in a barrel in the sun to be tried out," responded Jim. "The oil is worth more than sixty cents a gallon."

"And those?"

He indicated the box of "sounds."

"Cut 'em open with a pair of shears, press out the blood, and spread 'em on wire netting to dry for three days; then sew 'em up in sacks, to be shipped to some glue-factory. Four pounds of 'em'll bring a dollar.

These things and some others are the by-products of the fishing business. They're worth too much to throw away."

Percy's eye dwelt on the knives and ap.r.o.ns of his three a.s.sociates.

"I'm glad I don't have to fish for a living," he said.

VII

SHORTS AND COUNTERS

Percy slept soundly that night. To be sure, the alarm routed out the Spurlingites at the unseemly hour of four, but that was far better than twelve. After breakfast he enjoyed a cigarette on the beach while the others were helping Filippo clear away. It was a calm, beautiful morning, and as young Whittington gazed over the smooth, blue sea he felt that even a fisherman's life might have its redeeming features.

At six they all started to make the round of the lobster-traps, on the _Barracouta_. The first string of white buoys, striped with green, was encountered off Brimstone Point.

"Here's where we make a killing," said Jim.

As he approached the first buoy he opened his switch, stopping the engine. Putting on his woolen mittens, he picked up the gaff. Close under the starboard quarter bobbed the brown bottle that served as a toggle. Reaching out with his gaff, he hooked this aboard, and began hauling in the warp. At last the heavily weighted trap started off bottom and began to ascend. In a half-minute its end, draped with marine growths, broke the surface.

Holding the trap against the side, Jim tore off its inc.u.mbrances. The trailing ma.s.s was composed princ.i.p.ally of irregular, brownish-black, leathery sheets at the end of long stems.

"Kelp!" answered Jim to Percy's inquiry. "Devil's ap.r.o.ns! They grow on rocky bottom. I've seen a trap so loaded with 'em that you could hardly stir it."

He dragged the lath coop up on the side. It contained a miscellaneous a.s.sortment, the most interesting objects in which were four or five black, scorpion-like sh.e.l.l-fish clinging to the netted heads and sprawling on the bottom. Unb.u.t.toning the door at the top, Jim darted in his hand and seized one of these by its back. Round came the claws, wide open, and snapped shut close to his fingers; but he had grasped his prize at the one spot where the brandishing pincers could not reach him.

"He's a 'counter,' fast enough! No need of measuring him! Must weigh at least two pounds."

Jim dropped the snapping sh.e.l.l-fish into a tub in the standing-room.

"I thought lobsters were red," remarked Percy.

"They are--after you boil 'em."

Spurling's hand went into the trap again. This time the result was not so satisfactory. Out came a little fellow, full of fight. Jim tested his length by pressing his back between the turned-up ends of a bra.s.s measure screwed against the side of the standing-room.