Part 4 (1/2)
A cheerful blaze of wood soon caused the kettle to boil, and over my tea-supper I congratulated myself over my lucky adventure, for to lose neither fish, canoe, nor self, was indeed a large slice of luck.
Next day I improvised a pair of scales with the help of a half hundredweight and a seven-pound weight which I possessed, and found to my surprise that the monster weighed one hundred and three pounds. This was not only the largest eel I ever caught, but the largest I ever saw.
In Guernsey market the heaviest conger I saw was one of sixty-seven pounds--a baby in comparison to mine!
The weights I used in weighing the monster were stones adjusted to the proper iron weights, which I used as standards, and then by selecting various sized stones obtained after great toil a whole set, from one pound up to ten pounds, and thus could weigh anything.
I had many other fis.h.i.+ng adventures, but I think the above was about the most exciting. I had many good takes of whiting and pollock, but was not so fortunate among the soles, and plaice, and such-like ground game, as my net was a very ramshackle affair of my own construction.
I had also some remarkable miscellaneous captures at different times.
Once in the winter I had laid a long line for codling, and brought up, firmly hooked, a very nice red tablecloth, beautifully worked round the edge by some skilled hand in an Oriental pattern. I used it on gala days as a flag, and I dare say pa.s.sers by in the various vessels wondered to what nationality it belonged, as the centre was ornamented with a golden elephant with very curly tusks worked in white beads.
Another day I fished up a copper oil can, such as engineers use to oil machinery with; and yet another time a bag of gravel which had apparently once formed part of a yacht's ballast.
When I found time heavy on my hands I would often take my canoe about fifty yards south of La Fauconnaire, and with two or three lines fish for rock fish, and never, on a single occasion, returned empty-handed.
The worst part of this performance was digging the bait of lugworms on the little beach of Crevichon. It was terribly hard work lifting the rocks and boulders aside to find a place to dig, and then it was harder work in digging the nasty worms from the granite grit in which they resided, dwelt, or had their horrid being. Probably these hairy, oozy creatures have their joys and pleasures, and their woes, just as every other of G.o.d's creatures, but of what their happiness consists who can tell? Anyway they are good for bait, and so have use if not beauty to commend them.
Crabs and lobsters I could trap at any time by putting down ”pots”
anywhere round the island; but after a few weeks I got quite tired of them for the table, but would occasionally put down a couple of ”pots”
to see what of a curious nature I could catch. The crayfish, spider-crabs, and hermit crabs, gave me infinite amus.e.m.e.nt, as they are so different in their manners and customs to the ordinary crabs, and are very bellicose, going for each other tooth and nail, or rather legs and claws, in a most terrible manner. The way these little crustaceans maimed each other put me in mind of the scene in Scott's ”Fair Maid of Perth,” where the rival clans hew each others' limbs off with double-handed swords, so that a truce has to be called for the purpose of clearing the battle-ground of human _debris_. The crabs have the advantage over the human species, insomuch that they can reproduce a lost limb.
Finding I could catch a large quant.i.ty of fish of all kinds, especially rock fish, which, being new to me, I greatly admired, I set about constructing a fish pond near the house.
These rock fish are a curiosity in the way of fish. They run from about six inches to two feet in length; weigh from a few ounces to a dozen pounds, and no two that I have ever caught are alike, either in colour or disposition of spots. They are spotty and speckly all over. Some have copper-coloured spots, some yellow, some brown, some green, some red, and some an a.s.sortment of colours, so that one never knows what colour is coming up next. Persons who are fond, when playing cards, of betting upon the colour of the trump to be turned up--black or red--would find the pastime of ”backing their colour” infinitely varied, if they tried to guess the colour of the fish which would next appear.
My first fish pond, ten feet by five feet, was a failure, as it was leaky; but not to be beaten I commenced another and much larger one, sixteen feet by ten feet. I selected a site close above high water-mark, and commenced digging, and in fact worked a whole day at it, intending to line it with a mixture of sand and lime, of which I had several tubs for making mortar for repairing the brickwork of my homestead; but that very evening I discovered a natural fish pond, or rather a pool, that could be turned into one by a little outlay of labour.
A cleft between two large rocks, separating them by about six feet, allowed the sea at high tide to flow into a pool at the foot of an amphitheatre of rocks, which gave a basin of water, at high tide, about twenty feet across. Here was a grand, natural fish pool, and I soon turned it into a comfortable home for my finny captures.
First at low tide I cleared the bottom of this pool, and made it deeper.
Then, having previously made a huge batch of mortar, I set to work and built a wall of rock across the cleft, until I had raised it six feet high, taking great care to make it perfectly water-tight. This I strengthened by laboriously placing blocks of stone on each side, so as to prevent the sea from toppling my mortar-built wall over. As a pond it was a perfect success, except in one particular, and that was that the water in time would evaporate, or become stale; so I put my wits together and constructed a curious kind of mill pump, which worked with four wooden buckets upon an endless rope. It was jerky, but effective; that is it was effective at high water, when the tide came up to my sea-wall. At this time the mill, being placed right for the wind, would commence to work, and the buckets to ascend and descend, and each shoot its gallon of water into the pond, till sometimes it was full to the brim, and even running over. Thus I could change the water at will. I was simply delighted, and fished from morning till night to stock my pool, and in a fortnight had specimens of all kinds, colours, and sizes.
Eels, soles, whiting, dorey, pollock, long-nose, crabs, lobsters were all there, but to my mind the big blubber-lipped rock fish were the peac.o.c.ks of my pool.
I was so fond of lingering by this pool to read, and smoke, and watch the fish, that I built myself a rock summer-house, and roofed it in with wood, upon which I placed a layer of mortar, and then thatched it with pine branches and braken. It was a picturesque little house, in a picturesque spot, and if I tell the truth, I believe I made a picturesque Crusoe.
My dress consisted, in summer, of white duck trousers, canvas shoes, coloured flannel s.h.i.+rt, a blue jean jacket, and broad-brimmed hat. Round my waist I always wore a long red sash; it was four yards long, consequently, would encircle my waist three times and still leave some of the two ends to hang down at my side. This sash I found very useful, for I used it as a wallet or hold-all. Nothing came amiss to it--tobacco, pipes, cartridges, biscuits, fruit, fis.h.i.+ng tackle, all were tucked away in it at different or the same time, as they were so easy to get at, and left the hands free.
Now let us leave fish and fis.h.i.+ng, and see in what other ways I enjoyed my solitary life.
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CHAPTER VI.
”FLAP” THE GULL--SURGICAL OPERATION--THE GULL WHO REFUSED TO DIE--TAXIDERMY EXTRAORDINARY--FEATHERED FRIENDS--SNAKES.