THE FISH ARE AS HUNGRY AS HE IS.
To fish at Sker had always been a matter of some risk and conflict;
inasmuch as Evan Thomas, who lived in the ancient house there, and kept
the rabbit-warren, never could be brought to know that the sea did not
belong to him. He had a grant from the manor, he said, and the shore was
part of the manor; and whosoever came hankering there was a poacher, a
thief, and a robber. With these hard words, and harder blows, he kept
off most of the neighbourhood; but I always felt that the lurch of the
tide was no more than the heeling of a ship, and therefore that any one
free of the sea, was free of the ebb and flow of it.
So when he began to reproach me once, I allowed him to swear himself
thoroughly out, and then, in a steadfast manner, said, "Black Evan, the
shore is not mine or yours. Stand you here and keep it, and I will never
come again;" for in three hours' time there would be a fathom of water
where we stood. And when he caught me again, I answered, "Evan Black, if
you catch me inland, meddling with any of your land-goods, coneys, or
hares, or partridges, give me a leathering like a man, and I must put up
with it; but dare you touch me on this shore, which belongs to our lord
the King, all the way under high-water mark, and by the rod of the Red
Sea I will show you the law of it."
He looked at me and the pole I bore, and, heavy and strong man as he
was, he thought it wiser to speak me fair. "Well, well, Dyo, dear," he
said in Welsh, having scarce any English, "you have served the King,
Dyo, and are bound to know what is right and wrong; only let me know,
good man, if you see any other rogues fishing here."
This I promised him freely enough, because, of course, I had no
objection to his forbidding other people, and especially one vile
Scotchman. Yet being a man of no liberality, he never could see even me
fish there without following and abusing me, and most of all after a
market-day.
That tide I had the rarest sport that ever you did see. Scarcely a
conger-hole I tried without the landlord being at home, and biting
savagely at the iron, which came (like a rate) upon him; whereupon I had
him by the jaw, as the tax-collector has us. Scarcely a lobster-shelf I
felt, tickling as I do under the weeds, but what a grand old soldier
came to the portcullis of his stronghold, and nabbed the neat-hide up my
fingers, and stuck thereto till I hauled him out "nolus-woluss," as we
say; and there he showed his purple nippers, and his great long
whiskers, and then his sides, hooped like a cask, till his knuckled legs
fought with the air, and the lobes of his tail were quivering. It was
fine to see these fellows, worth at least a shilling, and to pop them
into my basket, where they clawed at one another. Glorious luck I had,
in truth, and began to forget my troubles, and the long way home again
to a lonely cottage, and my fear that little Bunny was passing a sorry
day of it. She should have a new pair of boots, and mother Jones a good
Sunday dinner; and as for myself, I would think, perhaps, about half a
glass of fine old rum (to remind me of the navy), and a pipe of the
short cut Bristol tobacco--but that must depend upon circumstances.
Now circumstances had so much manners (contrary to their custom) that
they contrived to keep themselves continually in my favour. Not only did
I fetch up and pile a noble heap of oysters and mussels just at the
lowest of the ebb, but after that, when the tide was flowing, and my
work grew brisker--as it took me by the calves, and my feet were not cut
by the mussels more than I could walk upon--suddenly I found a thing
beating all experience both of the past and future.
This was, that the heat of the weather, and the soft south wind
prevailing, had filled the deep salt-water pools among the rocks of Pool
Tavan, and as far as Ffynnon wen, with the finest prawns ever seen or
dreamed of; and also had peopled the shallow pools higher up the beach
with shoals of silver mullet-fry--small indeed, and as quick as
lightning, but well worth a little trouble to catch, being as fine
eating as any lady in the land could long for.
And here for a moment I stood in some doubt, whether first to be down on
the prawns or the mullet; but soon I remembered the tide would come
first into the pools that held the prawns. Now it did not take me very
long to fill a great Holland bag with these noble fellows, rustling
their whiskers, and rasping their long saws at one another. Four gallons
I found, and a little over, when I came to measure them; and sixteen
shillings I made of them, besides a good many which Bunny ate raw.
Neither was my luck over yet, for being now in great heart and good
feather, what did I do but fall very briskly upon the grey mullet in the
pools: and fast as they scoured away down the shallows, fluting the
surface with lines of light, and huddling the ripples all up in a curve,
as they swung themselves round on their tails with a sweep, when they
could swim no further--nevertheless it was all in vain, for I blocked
them in with a mole of kelp, weighted with heavy pebbles, and then baled
them out at my pleasure.
Now the afternoon was wearing away, and the flood making strongly up
channel by the time I came back from Ffynnon wen--whither the mullet had
led me--to my headquarters opposite Sker farmhouse, at the basin of Pool
Tavan. This pool is made by a ring of rocks sloping inward from the sea,
and is dry altogether for two hours' ebb and two hours' flow of a good
spring-tide, except so much as a little land-spring, sliding down the
slippery sea-weed, may have power to keep it moist.
A wonderful place here is for wild-fowl, the very choicest of all I
know, both when the sluice of the tide runs out and when it comes
swelling back again; for as the water ebbs away with a sulky wash in the
hollow places, and the sand runs down in little crannies, and the
bladder-weeds hang trickling, and the limpets close their valves, and
the beautiful jelly-flowers look no better than chilblains,--all this
void and glistening basin is at once alive with birds.
First the seapie runs and chatters, and the turn-stone pries about with
his head laid sideways in a most sagacious manner, and the sanderlings
glide in file, and the greenshanks separately. Then the shy curlews over
the point warily come, and leave one to watch; while the brave little
mallard teal, with his green triangles glistening, stands on one foot in
the fresh-water runnel, and shakes with his quacks of enjoyment.
Again, at the freshening of the flood, when the round pool fills with
sea (pouring in through the gate of rock), and the waves push merrily
onward, then a mighty stir arises, and a different race of birds--those
which love a swimming dinner--swoop upon Pool Tavan. Here is the giant
grey gull, breasting (like a cherub in church) before he dowses down his
head, and here the elegant kittywake, and the sullen cormorant in the
shadow swimming; and the swiftest of swift wings, the silver-grey
sea-swallow, dips like a butterfly and is gone; while from slumber out
at sea, or on the pool of Kenfig, in a long wedge, cleaves the air the
whistling flight of wild-ducks.
Standing upright for a moment, with their red toes on the water, and
their strong wings flapping, in they souse with one accord and a
strenuous delight. Then ensues a mighty quacking of unanimous content, a
courteous nodding of quick heads, and a sluicing and a shovelling of
water over shoulder-blades, in all the glorious revelry of insatiable
washing.
Recovering thence, they dress themselves in a sober-minded manner,
paddling very quietly, proudly puffing out their breasts, arching their
necks, and preening themselves, titivating (as we call it) with their
bills in and out the down, and shoulders up to run the wet off; then
turning their heads, as if on a swivel, they fettle their backs and
their scapular plume. Then, being as clean as clean can be, they begin
to think of their dinners, and with stretched necks down they dive to
catch some luscious morsel, and all you can see is a little sharp tail
and a pair of red feet kicking.
Bless all their innocent souls, how often I longed to have a good shot
at them, and might have killed eight or ten at a time with a long gun
heavily loaded! But all these birds knew, as well as I did, that I had
no gun with me; and although they kept at a tidy distance, yet they let
me look at them, which I did with great peace of mind all the time I was
eating my supper. The day had been too busy till now to stop for any
feeding; but now there would be twenty minutes or so ere the bass came
into Pool Tavan, for these like a depth of water.
So after consuming my bread and maybird, and having a good drink from
the spring, I happened to look at my great flag-basket, now ready to
burst with congers and lobsters and mullet, and spider-crabs for Bunny
(who could manage any quantity), also with other good saleable fish; and
I could not help saying to myself, "Come, after all now, Davy Llewellyn,
you are not gone so far as to want a low Scotchman to show you the place
where the fish live." And with that I lit a pipe.
What with the hard work, and the heat, and the gentle plash of wavelets,
and the calmness of the sunset, and the power of red onions, what did I
do but fall asleep as snugly as if I had been on watch in one of his
Majesty's ships of the line after a heavy gale of wind? And when I woke
up again, behold, the shadows of the rocks were over me, and the sea was
saluting the calves of my legs, which up to that mark were naked; and
but for my instinct in putting my basket up on a rock behind me, all my
noble catch of fish must have gone to the locker of Davy Jones.
At this my conscience smote me hard, as if I were getting old too soon;
and with one or two of the short strong words which I had learned in the
navy, where the chaplain himself stirred us up with them, up I roused
and rigged my pole for a good bout at the bass. At the butt of the ash
was a bar of square oak, figged in with a screw-bolt, and roven round
this was my line of good hemp, twisted evenly, so that if any fish came
who could master me, and pull me off the rocks almost, I could indulge
him with some slack by unreeving a fathom of line. At the end of the
pole was a strong loop-knot, through which ran the line, bearing two
large hooks, with the eyes of their shanks lashed tightly with cobbler's
ends upon whipcord. The points of the hooks were fetched up with a file,
and the barbs well backened, and the whole dressed over with whale-oil.
Then upon one hook I fixed a soft crab, and on the other a cuttle-fish.
There were lug-worms also in my pot, but they would do better after
dark, when a tumbling cod might be on the feed.
Good-luck and bad-luck has been my lot ever since I can remember;
sometimes a long spell of one, wing and wing, as you might say, and then
a long leg of the other. But never in all my born days did I have such a
spell of luck in the fishing way as on that blessed 10th of July 1782.
What to do with it all now became a puzzle, for I could not carry it
home all at once; and as to leaving a bit behind, or refusing to catch a
single fish that wanted to be caught, neither of these was a possible
thing to a true-born fisherman.
At last things came to such a pitch that it was difficult not to believe
that all must be the crowd and motion of a very pleasant dream. Here was
the magic ring of the pool, shaped by a dance of sea-fairies, and the
fading light shed doubtfully upon the haze of the quivering sea, and the
silver water lifting like a mirror on a hinge, while the black rocks
seemed to nod to it; and here was I pulling out big fishes almost faster
than I cast in.