Part 8 (1/2)

The Captain noted carefully the changing colour of the water as we drew over some bank, and he took bearings, too, from points on the land we had left nearly ten miles astern. In a few minutes he luffed a bit and sang out--

”Down with your foresail! Get in the jib.”

The bowsprit pointed right in the wind's eye, and the boom hung fore and aft, the sail empty, as the cutter lost her headway.

”Is that anchor ready?”

”Aye, aye, sir!” replied Walter and Drake.

”Let go! About five fathoms, is it?” called the Captain.

”About that!” the boys answered.

”That's just what we want. Make fast! Now stow the mainsail, so that it won't be in the way of your lines, and fish. There, that will do!

Now, all to the lines! Who'll have the first fish?”

In a minute Drake hauled that up--a cod--and the fun commenced. Cod and ba.s.s, and now and then a halibut, as fast as we could bait and pull!

There was soon a lively flopping in our craft, and now and then a dog-fish would take hold, much to our annoyance, for generally he broke the hook or line, or else, if we got him in, made such a furious las.h.i.+ng about our legs that we had to finish him with a hatchet.

We lay at anchor there until we had had fis.h.i.+ng enough. About two o'clock we stopped, having caught, as near as the Captain could estimate, between one and two hundred pounds of cod, a dog-fish, and eleven sea-ba.s.s--not the striped ba.s.s, such as we took off the rocks with a troll line in rough water: that was the _Labrax lineatus_; but the sea-ba.s.s, the _Centropristes nigricans_, superior in t.i.tle, but inferior in every other way to the striped ba.s.s.

It was a job to pitch the fish together and out of the way, and then clean the blood, slime, and wet from our deck and get ready for making sail; but after some work it was done, and our lines stowed away.

”Now, boys,” said the Captain, ”we will have dinner, and get under way again. As the wind has hauled around to the east, we will take our course for the north. I want to show you that sh.o.r.e, it is so bold and wild. With such a stiff wind I reckon we can run up ten miles nearly, and then turn about and get home _easily_ before dark. I say, boys, won't Mr Clare wish he had had a hand in catching that haul?”

Having finished the cold dinner with such an appet.i.te as pleasure, exercise, and sea air give, we made sail and stood to the northward.

The breeze was so fresh before long that the Captain told us to take a reef in our mainsail. Walter held the helm, and in little more than an hour we were sailing near the grand rugged sh.o.r.e that Captain Mugford had wished us to see. Here and there, in little coves defended by rocky sides, were the cottages of fishermen, and then great headlands of cavernous stone dashed by the waves. Again the sh.o.r.e fell to a lower level, and pines and other trees cl.u.s.tered together to defy the storms, and give pleasure to the eye. Farther on, the roughness of the coast vanished for a few hundred yards to make place for a yellow sandy beach where was stretched a long seine. Opposite that piece of strand, and close by our cutter's course stood a small stony island, bearing a single invalid old pine, from whose topmost branch a great bald eagle rose and hovered over our craft. Then the sh.o.r.e grew again like an impregnable fortification, and made out to a sharp cape, on the point of which stood a lonely, snow-white lighthouse.

”There, boys, we must go about now,” said the Captain, as we neared the cape. ”But see how the wind has fallen. If it holds on in this way we shan't have enough to take us home before night. Let's see what o'clock it is. That lighthouse is seventeen miles from the point of our own cape.”

The Captain fumbled away at his waist-band--encircling a rotundity like that described of Saint Nicholas--and pulled out his immense gold turnip.

”Columbus' compa.s.s! Twenty minutes to five! Come, Walter, haul in the mainsheet, and come up to the wind. Are you ready to go about? Well, down with the helm then. I'll tend the jib. Those boys are so busy examining the fish that we will not interrupt them.”

”No, sir,” I said, ”we are ready for anything.”

”Oh no, Bob,” replied the Captain, ”go on with your studies. There is nothing to do just now. Walter, you may steer by the sh.o.r.e. But I don't like this slackening of the breeze, and it is drawing more to the south-west; we shall have it right ahead soon. The sun looks ugly, too.

That murky red face foretells a row of some kind.”

”I hope that we shall get the _Youth_ safe at her moorings before night comes, or a storm either--shall we not?” asked Harry.

”We'll hope so,” answered Captain Mugford, who pulled out his pipe and filled it hard, continuing, ”Who'll hand me out a light from the cuddy?”

I went in and struck one, and brought him a match, blazing famously.

”Thank, you,” he said. ”Drake--just,” (puff puff)--”just shake--oh!

there goes that light!” I quickly brought him another--”just shake out--that--that--” (puff, puff). He had it all right now, the smoke coming in vast volumes; so he replaced his hat and removed the pipe from his teeth for a moment to complete the order--

”Drake, just shake that reef out of the mainsail.”