I cannot say that the fishing was what we had expected. There was
plenty of fish, and Tish grew quite expert at opening clams and putting
them on her hook. But as Aggie could never bear the smell of clams at
any time, and as the rocking of the boat seriously disturbed her, we
had rather a troublesome time with her. Once she even begged to be
thrown overboard.
“Nonsense!” Tish said. “You can’t swim and you know it.”
“I don’t want to swim, Tish,” she said pitifully “I just want to die,
and the quicker the better.”
On rough days, too, when an occasional wave dashed over us, and Tish
would shake herself and speak of the bracing effect of salt water, our
poor Aggie would fall into violent sneezing, and more than once lost a
fish by so doing. And I shall never forget the day when she drew up a
squid, and the wretched thing squirted its ink all over her. There was
a certain dignity in the way she turned her blackened face to Tish.
“I have stood for clams, Tish,” she said, “and I have stood for the
rocking of this d-damned boat. But when the very creatures of the deep
insult me I’m through!”
As, however, a wave came overboard just then and removed practically
all the ink, as well as the squid itself, she was fortunately unable
to express herself further. It speaks well for our dear Tish’s
self-control that she allowed Aggie’s speech to pass without reproof,
and even offered her a small glass of blackberry cordial from the
bottle we always carried with us.
But it was in the matter of payment for the fish that our plans
suffered a serious reverse. We had on our first day out taken what we
imagined was a hundred pounds of various sorts, many unknown to us, and
on the way to the fish wharf, while Aggie and I neatly arranged them
as to sizes, Tish figured out the probable value.
“About forty dollars,” she said. “And if they take that thing with
whiskers under its chin, even more. Gasoline, one dollar. Christopher’s
wages and boat hire per day, eight dollars. Clams, a dollar and a
quarter. Leaving a net profit of twenty-nine dollars and seventy-five
cents, or clear every month eight hundred and seventy dollars and fifty
cents.”
She closed her notebook and we drew in under the fish wharf, where a
man who was chewing tobacco came to the edge and looked down at us.
“We are selling these fish,” Tish said with her usual dignity. “They
are quite fresh, and ought to bring the best market rates.”
The man spit into the water and then glanced at our boxes.
“Jerry!” he called. “Want any more fish?”
“What kind of fish?” a voice replied from back in the shed.
The man squinted again at our catch.
“Looks like succotash to me,” he called.
Jerry came out and stared down at us, and then slowly descended the
ladder to the boat. He had a mean face, Tish says, and he made us about
as welcome as the bubonic plague. He said nothing, but picked out six
haddock and handed them up to the man above.
“Thirty cents,” he said.
“I’m paying sixty in the market,” Tish protested.
“Thirty-five,” he repeated, and started up the ladder.
“Forty,” said Tish firmly.
“Look here,” he said with bitterness, “all you’ve had to do is to catch
those fish. That’s easy; the sea’s full of ’em. What have I got to
do? I’ve got to clean ’em and pack ’em and ice ’em and ship ’em. I’m
overpaying you; that’s what I’m doing.”
“What am I going to do with the others?” Tish demanded angrily.
“Seventy pounds of good fish, and half the nation needing food.”
“You might send it to Congress,” he suggested. “They say it’s good for
the brain--phosphorus.”
“You must eat a great deal of fish!” said Tish witheringly.
“Or,” he said, brightening, “take it home to the cat. There’s nothing a
cat will get real worked up about like a nice mess of fish.”
He then went up the ladder, leaving us in speechless fury. But Tish
recovered quickly and began figuring again. “Six haddock at seven
pounds each,” she said. “Forty-two pounds at thirty-five cents per
pound, or about fourteen dollars. At least we’ve made our expenses.
And of course we can eat some.”
Aggie, who had felt the motion severely coming in, raised herself from
the bottom of the boat at this, and asked for another sip of cordial.
“They smell,” she wailed, and fell back again.
“All perfectly healthy fish smell,” said Tish.
“So does a healthy skunk,” said Aggie, holding her handkerchief to her
nose, “but I don’t pretend to like it.”
And then Jerry came down the ladder and handed Tish a quarter and a
five-cent piece!
“There you are,” he said cheerfully. “One of them’s a bit wormy, but we
say here that a wormy fish is a healthy fish.”
I draw a veil over the painful scene that followed. That fish house
paid two-thirds of a cent a pound for fish, no more and no less, and
the more Tish raged the higher Jerry retreated up the ladder until
he was on the wharf again. From there he looked down at us before he
disappeared.
“You might get more out in the desert, lady,” he said as a parting
shot. “But then, you’d get a pretty good price for a plate of ice cream
in hell too.”
And with that he disappeared, and left us to face our situation.
Our deficit on the day, according to Tish, was ten dollars. In three
months it would amount to nine hundred dollars. She closed her notebook
with a snap.
“Unless we count intangible assets,” she said, “we shall certainly be
bankrupt. Of course there is the gain in health; the salt air----”
“Health!” said Aggie feebly. “A little more of this, Tish Carberry, and
Jerry will be cleaning and packing and icing and shipping something
that isn’t fish.”
“Then again,” said Tish, ignoring this outburst, “we may find something
unusual. There are whales about here, according to Christopher. And the
oil of the whale is still used, I believe.”
But after learning from Christopher that whales ranged in size from
fifty to one hundred feet, and were not caught on a line, however
heavy, but with a knife thrown into some vital part, she was compelled
to abandon this idea. Indeed, I do not know how we should have filled
up our summer had it not been that on that very evening we received a
visit from a Mr. MacDonald, who turned out to be the deputy sheriff on
the island.
Aggie was still far from well that night. She said the floor kept
rising and falling, and at dinner several times she had clutched at her
plate to keep it from sliding off the table. So she had been about
to pour herself a glass of blackberry cordial, when Lily May saw Mr.
MacDonald coming, and hastily took the bottle and hid it under a table.
Christopher brought him in, and he sat down and began to sniff almost
immediately. But he said that he had called to secure our assistance;
it wasn’t often he needed help, but he needed it now.
“It’s these here rum runners, ladies,” he said. “You take a place like
this, all islands and about a million of them. We’ve got as much coast
line as the state of California.”
“Indeed?” said Tish politely.
“And they know every inch of it. And every trick,” he added. “’Tain’t
more than a week now since the government inspector found a case of
Black and White tied under the surface to one of the channel buoys.
And who’s to know whether the fellows hauling up lobster pots aren’t
hauling up something else too?”
“Very probably they are,” said Tish dryly--“from the price of lobsters.”
“There’s liquor all around these waters. Last big storm we had, a lot
of it must have got smashed up, and there was a porpoise reeling around
the town wharf for two or three hours. Finally it brought up against
one of the poles of the fish pier and went asleep there. It was a
disgraceful exhibition.”
“Tish,” Aggie said suddenly, “if this floor doesn’t keep still that
bottle will upset.”
Mr. MacDonald stared at her and then cleared his throat.
“Of course I’m taking for granted,” he said, “that you ladies believe
in upholding the law.”
“We are members of the W.C.T.U.,” Tish explained. “We stand ready to
assist our nation in every possible way. We do not even believe in beer
and light wines.”
He seemed reassured at that, and explained what he wanted. The
Government had a number of patrol boats outside, and they were doing
their best, but in spite of them liquor was coming in and was being
shipped hither and yon.
“The worst of it is,” he said, “we don’t know who we can trust. Only
last week I paid a fellow fifteen dollars good money to take me out
and locate a rum runner, and he got lost in the fog and had to come
back. Yesterday I learned he got forty dollars from the other side for
getting lost.”
His idea was that under pretense of fishing we could assist him by
watching for the criminals, and reporting anything we saw that was
suspicious. As Tish said afterward, there was no profit for the church
in the arrangement, but there was a spiritual gain to all of us.
“There are things one cannot measure in dollars and cents,” she said.
We all agreed, and rose to see Mr. MacDonald to the door. But I think
he left in a divided state of mind, for Christopher, standing near the
table, upset the bottle of blackberry cordial, and Aggie, who had been
watching it, gave a wail and started for it. But the floor was still
going up and down to her, and her progress across the room was most
unsteady.
It is to this unfortunate combination undoubtedly that we owe our later
ill luck. For Mr. MacDonald caught her as she was about to bump the
mantel, and still holding her, turned to Tish.
“That fellow that double-crossed me,” he said with meaning, “he got
thirty days.”
“When we agree to do a thing we do it,” Tish said stiffly.
“So did he,” said Mr. MacDonald, and went away, taking a final sniff at
the door.
Tish made her usual preparations for our new rôle. She at once sent
to Bar Harbor for a pair of field glasses, and oiled and loaded her
revolver.
“Not that I mean to shoot them,” she said, “but a well-placed shot or
two can wreck their engine. In that case all we shall have to do is to
tow them in.”
She procured also a good towing rope for this purpose, and spent her
odd time the next day or two shooting at a floating target in the
water. Unfortunately, the fact that a bullet will travel over the water
like a skipping stone escaped her, and our next-door neighbor, who was
just hauling in the largest halibut of the season, had the misfortune
to have his line cut in half and of seeing the halibut escape.
On the other hand, her resolution was strengthened by a letter from
Charlie Sands, her nephew, which showed the moral deterioration being
fostered by these wretched liquor smugglers.
“Dear Aunt Tish,” he wrote. “It has just occurred to me that you are
near the Canadian border. Scotch ought to be good and also cheap there.
Why not fill a hot-water bag or two for me? Even a bottle or two would
not come amiss, and if you are nervous on the train I suggest the space
outside your ventilator in the drawing-room.”
Tish’s indignation was intense. She wrote him a very sharp letter,
informing him that she was now in the government service. “If the worst
comes,” she said, “I shall not hesitate to arrest my own family. No
Carberry has been jailed yet for breaking the nation’s laws, but it is
not too late to begin.”
It may have been pure coincidence, but Lily May ordered a hot-water bag
from the mainland soon after that. She said her feet got cold at night.
I must confess Lily May puzzled us at that time. She would not go
fishing, but stayed at home and insulted poor Christopher. She claimed
that he spent most of his time at the woodpile smoking cigarettes, and
so she would go out and watch him. Hannah said that her manner to him
was really overbearing, and that she believed she said quite insulting
things to him under her breath.
She counted the wood he cut too. Once Hannah heard her say, “Twice two
fifty is five hundred. You’ve still five hundred to go.”
And he groaned and said, “It’s the h---- of a long way yet.”
She was very odd about the revenue matter, also, and said very little
when Tish got her badge.
“Well,” she said, “it may stop a bullet. But that’s all it will stop.”
As Tish said, such cynicism in the young was really bewildering.