FROM OUT THE FOG
Despite the fog that lay low over the water, the sea was choppy. The
fisherman who rode in the improvised crow’s nest in the forward rigging
of the fishing sloop rose ten feet in air to fall, then to rise and fall
again. There was a tossing, whirling motion that would have made most
girls deathly sick. Not so this one; for the fisherman who stood there
ever gripping the harpoon, with alert eyes watching, ever watching the
narrow circle of fogbound ocean, was Ruth.
Swordfish had been reported off Monhegan; in fact Captain Field had
brought in a modest-sized one only the day before.
Although Don and the two girls had decided that lobster trapping on the
Monhegan shoals was unfair to those daring souls who made their home on
these wave-beaten shores, they were spending a few days on the island.
“May never be here again,” Don had said. “From all I can see, it’s not
quite like anything on earth.
“I’m going to Booth Bay on the mail tug. The sea has calmed down quite a
bit. If you girls want to have a try at something, deep sea cod, horse
mackerel, or even swordfish, why there’s the sloop. Safe enough as long’s
you keep in sound of the fog horn or sight of the island. Go ahead.”
Because swordfishing is quite the most thrilling type of fishing on all
the coast, and because these huge battlers of the deep bring a marvelous
price when caught, Ruth had elected to go swordfishing. And here they
were.
There was some fog, but as long as the hoarse _Whoo-whooo-oo_ of the fog
horn on Manana sounded in their ears, they were safe. That sound would
guide them back.
Dressed as she was in faded knickers and a ragged lumberjack, with a
boy’s cap pulled down tight over her unruly locks, one might easily have
taken this stalwart girl of the Maine coast for a boy, or, at the
distance, even for a man.
“Guess we won’t see any to-day,” she shouted back to Pearl at the wheel.
“Thickening up,” Pearl replied.
“May burn off later.”
“May.”
“We might drop anchor and try for cod,” said Ruth. “There are lines and
bait in the forward cabin. We——”
She broke short off to stare away to the right. The next second she
gripped her harpoon more securely as she uttered a command almost in a
whisper.
The capable hands of her sixteen-year-old cousin gave the wheel a turn.
The boat bore away to the right. The look on Pearl’s face became
animated. She knew what the command meant. A great fish of one sort or
another had broken water.
“Probably a horse mackerel,” she told herself. “Might be a swordfish,
though. If it is—if she gets him! Oh, boy!”
The two girls had not been harpooning often, so this little adventure was
a real treat. Even a horse mackerel would be worth something.
“But a swordfish,” Pearl told herself with a real thrill, “one of them
may be worth a hundred dollars. And oh, boy! think of the thrill of the
chase!”
The big girl in the crow’s nest was not dreaming. With blue eyes intent,
with the color in her cheek heightened with excitement, she was studying
an object that, now lifting on the crest of a wave, showed black against
the skyline and now, with scarcely a perceptible motion, disappeared
beneath the sea.
“Never saw a fish behave like that,” she told herself. “Acts like a
log—almost—not quite. A log does not go under unless a wave hits it. This
thing does. Shaped like a swordfish. But whoever heard of a swordfish
acting that way?”
Once more she turned her head to broadcast an order in a tone that was
all but a whisper.
“It is a swordfish,” she whispered back, ten seconds later. “I saw his
sword. He’s a monster!”
A swordfish! Her mind was in a whirl. Suppose they got him! A hundred
dollars. What did it not mean to those fisherfolk! A new suit for her
father, a dress for herself, a new stove for the kitchen and perhaps a
new punt. They needed a new one badly.
“A swordfish! It is! It is!” Her heart pounded furiously against her ribs
as the boat came closer, ever closer to that languid black monster that
now rising, now sinking, seemed half asleep.
A moment passed. Pearl caught the black gleam before her, and her eyes
shone as her tense muscles gripped the wheel. Pearl was standing up now.
Breathlessly she waited.
As for the girl in the crow’s nest, for the first time in her life she
was experiencing “buck fever.” Little wonder. Never before had she cast
for a swordfish, yet here before her a monster cut the waves. His
five-foot sword dripped with foam as he rolled lazily over and sank.
“Gone!” The tense muscles that had frozen her hands to the harpoon
relaxed.
A minute passed. And then——
“There! There he is!” came in a tense whisper from the stern.
Towering above the sea, her bronze face alight, the girl in the crow’s
nest lifted an arm. With skill and precision she poised her harpoon, then
let fly.
“Got him!” came from the stern.
Something splashed into the water. An empty keg sealed up tight and
fastened securely to the harpoon rope, had been thrown overboard. It
would mark the progress of the struggling fish.
But, strangely enough, the great fish did not struggle overmuch. After a
few wallowing flounders in an unavailing attempt to break away from the
harpoon line, he went down in a swirl of foam. A moment later he rose to
the top and swam heavily away.
Pearl knew what to do. She followed the fish.
“Acts awful queer,” was the big girl’s comment. A cold dread was gripping
her heart. What if this fish was sick?
“People don’t eat sick fish,” she told herself. “He’d be a dead loss.”
No food from the sea is more highly prized than is the steak of a
swordfish. None brings a higher price in the market. But if the fish was
not sound, then all their work went for nothing.
What was this? Some strange object was moving across the surface of the
water. Now on the crest of a wave, it plunged into the trough, then, like
some living thing, climbed the next wave.
“But it can’t be alive,” she told herself. “It’s only a mass of cloth and
twisted stick. Something tailing behind.”
For a moment she stared at this extraordinary phenomenon, an inanimate
object moving like a living thing across the water. Then of a sudden she
realized that this curious object was following the swordfish.
Like a flash it came over her, and her heart sank. This was a marker,
just as her floating barrel was. Someone had caught the fish before her.
“It’s some of those city folks who make their summer home on Monhegan,”
she told herself. “Been fishing with a kite. That’s the remains of their
kite gliding along down there. They got a fish and have been playing him,
tiring him out. That’s why he’s so sort of dead. Oh! Gee!” She rested her
head on her arm and wanted to cry.
Angling for swordfish with a kite is a sport indulged in by expert
fishermen all along the Atlantic coast. A live herring or other fish of
its size is attached to a hook on a line hanging from a kite. The kite is
then sailed from a boat over the water in such a manner that the live
bait, now beneath the water, now above it, moves along over the surface
like a small flying fish. The quarry, seeing this tempting prize, strikes
it, then the fight begins. The task of the sportsman is to tire the great
fish out. Of course, if the slender line is broken the prize is lost. The
battle sometimes lasts for hours.
It was no sad face that Ruth presented to the yellow oilskin-clad city
boy and girl whose motor boat, the _Speed King_, soon hove into view. She
wasn’t sorry she had spoiled their game. She was glad. She felt that they
had no right to make play out of what was work to her and had been to her
ancestors for generations.
“What did you do that for?” The city boy in the prow of the boat lifted a
clouded and angry face to Ruth. To do him full justice, he had taken her
for a boy.
“Do what?” Ruth asked belligerently.
“Harpoon our fish.”
“How’d I know it was your fish?”
“Had a line on him.”
“Couldn’t see your line.”
“He was about done for. We’d have had him in another half hour. We’ve
been after him for five hours.” The boy held up hands that were cut and
bleeding from handling the line. “It’s our first one, too.”
“Well,” said Ruth, and her tone was cold, “since you claim the fish, take
him. He won’t give you much trouble now. All I want is my line and keg.
That ought to satisfy you.”
Ruth knew that it wouldn’t satisfy. She knew all about this sportsman’s
ideas of catches. She had murdered their prize. That’s the way they would
look at it. If they didn’t take the fish with such and such tackle, so
heavy a line and pole, just such a reel, they had nothing to boast of.
She had spoiled their game. But she didn’t care. They had spoiled hers,
too, and it was more than just a silly game, it was bread and butter, a
new stove, some new clothes, a——
The boy began to speak again. His words burned with anger. “That don’t
satisfy us, you know it don’t, you meat hunter you——”
The young girl with very bright eyes that rode beside him, tugging at his
arm, stopped the angry flood. She whispered in his ear. Ruth heard, and
her face flushed.
What she had said was, “Don’t. It’s a girl.”
This made her more angry than ever, but she controlled her emotions and
said no more.
A moment later the _Speed King_ turned about and left the circle of
fog-ridden sea to Ruth and Pearl and to the great fish that had ceased to
struggle.
“Well,” said Ruth, rising wearily from her place fifteen minutes later,
“since they don’t seem to want the fish, guess we’d better take him home.
He’s worth a lot of money, and we need it.”
There was no spirit in her voice. There was no spring in her usually
buoyant self as she did the work of dispatching the fish, taking the keg
and lashing the prize for a tow to port. She had won what she wanted, but
now she had it she was sure she was not going to enjoy it, not even the
new dress.
Late that evening she delivered the prize to Captain Field, who promised
to carry it to market for her. She wasn’t going to get a great deal of
joy out of the money, but one could not quite throw it away.
“It’s tough luck,” Don said as she told him the story that evening. “I
suppose those city people must have their sport, but it’s a little hard
to understand why one person’s sport should interfere with another’s
business.”