Black Bass

by H. de Vere Stacpoole

BLACK BASS

H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

THE sea, surface-smooth, but under-run by a gentle swell, was breaking on the beach of Santa Catalina Island, and the roofs of Avalon were lit by the first rays of the morning sun. Avalon, facing the Californian coast, and tucked away in its little bay, is the fishing village where millionaires are the fishermen, and where kings of sport, like Colonel Moorhouse, von Hoffe, and Holder, may be seen walking about like ordinary folk, when not engaged in warfare with tuna, bass, yellow-tail, and the other kings of the sea.

The first fisherman down this morning was Colonel Calhoun. He was crossing the shingle to the sea-edge, carrying a rod, and followed by his gaffer and his boatman. He was walking with his son George, a good-looking young fellow of about twenty-two, black-haired, bright of eye, and kicking the shingle aside as he walked. The two men were evidently disputing about something, and the boatman and the gaffer, a long way behind, could catch, now and then on the sea wind, the voice of the Colonel and a few stray words. "No, suh! No, suh! Cut yourself adrift. She's a Pinckney! Not another word!" and then, loud enough to reach the plage, "You can jolly well go hang yourself!"

It was the end of the dispute, and George Calhoun, leaving the Colonel to embark in quest of sea-bass, turned and walked back up the shingle, a dejected figure against the bright background of the morning.

The Calhoun family were staying at the Presidio Hotel, and, as luck would have it, the Pinckney family were staying at the Avalon.

Now, between these two families there existed one of those half-reasonless, half-reasonable, deathless enmities that flourish only in the South. The Calhouns were a Charleston family, the Pinckneys hailed from Virginia, and, to complete and bind together their hatred, there existed the surest of all bonds—marriage ties.

But the animosity of the present Colonel Jack Calhoun and the present Roger Pinckney was a thing apart from the family feud, and more perfect.

These two men, Christians in every other respect, had carried on their warfare one against the other for the last thirty-five years, and Fate had helped them—helped them on five or six occasions to crab each other's deals in railway stock or cotton, brought them together once in a motor, smash in the streets of Richmond, and, lastly, had juggled with the invitations to the St. Cecilia ball in such a manner that the Pinckney family, just arrived on a visit to Charleston, were left out of that function, and, of course, put the insult down, without the least shadow of reason, to the Calhouns.

Each man was obsessed with the idea of grievous injuries done to him by the other, and now Fate had drawn them and their families into the little circle of Avalon, and George Calhoun had fallen in love with Maria Pinckney, dancing with her last night, to the families' disgrace, at the Presidio ball, and capping the business by proposing to her in the balcony of the hotel, to the sound of the music of the band and in the light of the great Southern moon.

He had only met her three times, but the moon does a lot down South besides lighting the lemon groves and the palms.

George had just told his father that not only had he proposed to Maria, but that he had been accepted, and the fury of the Colonel was so great that now, as he embarked in the dinghy for his yawl, he did not see the hated Roger Pinckney coming on to the plage with a rod in his hand and a man with a gaff following him.

The dinghy pushed off, a boy rowing, and the Colonel and his satellites crowded in the stern. A hundred yards out from the beach lay the Sunfish, a white-painted yawl, gasolene driven, and built for seaworthiness and comfort. It had been built specially to the Colonel's design, and had, therefore, all sorts of defects to balance its supposed qualities. It sailed like a wash-tub, and acted like a barrel in a heavy swell; the engine was too far forward, and the rudder and propeller did not hit it off together. But the Colonel was content, and that was the main thing.

He scrambled on board now, and, giving his rod to Joe, the gaffer, proceeded to inspect the engine, whilst the boy took the dinghy back to the beach.

It was delightful out here. The Sunfish riding to her moorings, moved gently to the long-spaced undulations of the swell, and the tune of the crystal-green waves on the shingle came as a hush-a-bye from the whole stretch of beach clipped by the two horns of the bay. Avalon, with the Stars and Stripes waving above the Presidio, looked like a toy village, and far away across the blue morning sea a freighter in ballast showed the foam , of her propeller, the faint thud-thud of which came like the beating of a pulse through the voices of the morning.

"There's the Pinckney yawl gettin' ready, and there's Pinckney himself puttin' off," said Joe, who was shading his eyes and looking shoreward. "He's not always so early out, and he's got Bill Robbins for a gaffer, and he's got a blame fool. Nick Sergusson was his gaffer, but they say he treated Nick crool bad in one of his tempers, day before yesterday—broke the butt piece of his rod on his neck for somethin' or 'nother that didn't amount to much, and gave him a hundred dollars to keep his head closed about it. Nick said nothin', but, all the same, he told me he'd sooner gaff for Satan than old man Pinckney."

The Colonel, wiping his hands with a piece of cotton waste, shaded his eyes and looked in the direction indicated. Then he ordered the boatman to unbuoy and roust up the engine, and came to his seat in the stern, where he began to overhaul his tackle, whilst the Sunfish, free of her moorings, began to make a bow wash against the glittering sea.

There is no fishing-ground in the world to compare with the waters round Santa Catalina Island, none so varied, none go rich. North of the island you get, in their season, bonito, yellow-fin, tuna and yellow-tail; east, striking across Sand Dab Bank, you find skip, jack porpoise, large flying-fish and sheep's-head. The tuna grounds lie to the south-east, and, working round the south of the island, you strike the haunts of the barracuda, swordfish, sunfish and the great kelp beds where hide the black sea-bass. You find yellow-tail near these kelp beds, too, and whitefish by chance.

The Colonel had brought his breakfast with him—sandwiches and a Thermos flask of coffee—and as the yawl, with full way upon her, turned due south, he ate his sandwiches and chatted with Joe on the subject of fish.

There is no other subject at Avalon. Politics, trade, cotton, or railway stocks may be mentioned casually, but the one serious thought occupying all men's minds—the idea dominating all other ideas—is fish.

They turned Bonito Point, clearing the southern end of the island, and there, twenty miles away across the blue, blue sea, lay the island of San Clemente, like a dream of the golden morning, and beyond San Clemente the Pacific, a sheet of azure stretching right to the coast of Japan.

The beauty of the scene awakened no feeling of enthusiasm in the Colonel. They were approaching the great kelp beds, and the boatman was getting ready the anchor.

You anchor for black bass fishing, and the boat end of the anchor rope has a buoy attached to it which can be flung overboard, so that the boat may have freedom of movement when the fish is on the hook.

"This is about the best spot," said Joe. "Shut off the engine, Micky, and get ready to heave."

The tune of the little engine ceased, and the Sunfish was suddenly surrounded by a great silence, broken only by the far-off crying of gulls and the hush of the surf from the coast of the island.

The anchor went over in ten-fathom water, and Joe proceeded to bait.

Now, if you want to understand the task that old Colonel Calhoun had set before himself, I must explain that the black sea-bass runs from one hundred to five hundred pounds in weight, is crafty beyond the natural in fish, and has the rushing power of a torpedo, that the Colonel's rod was a split bamboo weighing ten ounces, and his line an eighteen-strand linen thread that would snap at a strain of over thirty-eight pounds. He had five hundred feet of this line on his reel. The line had a leader of fine steel wire and a small sinker attached. To bring a four-hundred-pound fish to gaff with such tackle seems impossible to the uninitiated. It is the commonest of occurrences on the California and Florida fishing-grounds.

Joe baited the Colonel's hook with a slice of albacore, and over it went, flittering down through the green water, whilst the Colonel took his seat in the chair fixed for him in the stern, the butt of an unlit cigar between his teeth. Micky, the boatman, having seen that the buoy end of the mooring rope was foul of nothing, and ready to be cast overboard at a moment's notice, was cleaning up the little engine, and Joe, crouching with his gaff beside him, and his chin on the starboard gunnel, was brooding upon the waters.

"I'm thinking it's a good day for the bass," said Joe in an undertone, half to himself and half to the Colonel. "Water's got the feel of bass, this greasy swell keeps the kelp movin' just about enough to make 'em comfortable in their mind, and I haven't seen no durned sharks about." A faint throbbing sound made him turn his head.

Round the nearest point of coast a white yawl was coming, the blue flag of the Tuna Club at her masthead. She was steering for the kelp beds.

"It's Pinckney's yawl," said Joe. "Thought he was goin' after yellows-tail. After the bass, is he, with Bill Bobbins for gaffer? Why, the last time Bill got within strikin' distance of a bass he gaffed the line instead of the fish, he did so. Sand dabs is his game—sand dabs and a paternoster."

"I hope they'll keep clear of our water," growled the Colonel.

"They're makin' for a pitch haff a mile from this," said Joe. "Not near as good as here. But, Bill, he don't know. Give him the choosing of a dozen pitches, and he'd choose the worst. That's the way fools do—it's onnatural for them to choose the best. Now, just about here there's a big divide in the kelp, owin' to the current runnin' strong, and the bass, they head down the divide when they're shiftin' their feedin'-ground and wantin' to get out in the open sea to get to the outer kelp bed, and here's the place to find them."

The Colonel said nothing; all of a sudden his face had grown tense. He let a few feet of the line slip from the reel, and then, with an oath, began to reel in furiously. Some bait snatcher had taken his bait.

Joe rebaited, and a new cast was made.

"That chap is bringing me ill-luck," said the Colonel, glancing away to where the Pinckney yawl had anchored half a mile off. "He and his fool gaffer are enough to frighten all the bass between here and San Nicolas."

"It hasn't frightened his luck, anyhow," said Micky, the silent boatman.

He was right. Even at that distance it was evident that Pinckney had struck a big fish.

They could see the bending rod, they could see the despised Bill heaving the mooring rope overboard, and Joe watched, swearing beneath his breath, as the happy fisherman settled down to the big fight.

"I don't believe it's no bass; I believe it's a shark Pinckney's got on to," said he, "the way the line's runnin'!"

"It's a bass right enough," said the gloomy Micky. "It's makin' its big bull rush, and it's a four-hundred-pounder if it's an ounce. Look, now—it's checked!"

"Line's broke!" cried Joe.

"Broke your, eye! It's takin' a zig-zag now. Brayvo, Pinckney!"

"Maybe you're right, maybe you're right," muttered Joe, forgetting everything but the fight on hand. "I believe it is a bass—yes, for sure it is—and he's playin' it a treat."

The Colonel, furious, and biting his cigar, said nothing. He could have drowned Joe and Micky for their honest admiration of the other's skill, but he was ashamed to show his wrath, and, indeed, he had scarcely time before the knowledge came to him that something was at the bait. He let out the line slowly, and then, raising the rod tip till the line came taut, struck, hooking his fish.

At the same instant Micky, all eyes and nerves in a moment, flung the mooring rope and buoy overboard, whilst the line rushed out from the singing reel.

It was the big bull rush of a hooked bass, and the Colonel, standing now and making gentle pressure on the brake, watched the line flying away into the blue water, fathom after rushing fathom to the shrill gnat song of the reel. Every fiftieth foot of the fine was marked by red thread, and these thread marks, following one upon the other, seemed like a flight of gaudy red insects spitting the blue water.

Seven, eight, nine of them told that now four hundred and fifty feet of the line were out, and the yawl, no longer stationary, began to help in the fight. She was moving under the tension of the line, being towed by the fish, whilst the water chuckled against her planking, and the song of the reel went on and on, dying at last to silence.

The Colonel had checked his fish. With a pressure on the brake, bringing the line to within half an ounce of the breaking-point, he had stopped the rush and won the first rubber.

The great bass, making out to sea, was headed off his course, and the fisherman was now reeling in furiously.

The fish, checked in its course, had taken a hairpin curve, sweeping back towards the yawl for two hundred feet or so, then, still feeling the hook, it struck off at right angles.

The boatman, as cunning as the fish, bad the yawl's stern pointing on this new course in no time, so that, when the strain came on the rod, the engines going astern helped to reduce it.

Half a mile they were taken like this, and then of a sudden the strain on the line eased, and the rod straightened.

"He's off!" cried Micky.

"Off! Not he," replied Joe. "He's comin' back. Look out, Colonel!"

The Colonel, reeling in, shouted to Micky to put the engine ahead, and then, as the pluck of the fish came again, ordered it to be put astern.

Just as a fever patient tosses his head from side to side on the pillow, so was the great bass now tossing itself from side to side in the sea. Then came a series of zig-zag rushes absolutely fatal, had the fisherman been an inexperienced hand, and then, making a straight course, the fish brought them along the kelp bed for a mile, every yard of which was a moment worth living.

They were in Pinckney's water now, but unconscious of the fact. The Pinckneys' yawl, a few hundred yards away to the southward, showed white against the blue of sea and sky, with Pinckney standing in the stern, rod in hand, playing a fish that seemed as big or, maybe, even bigger than the Colonel's. But Pinckney was blind to the doings of the Colonel, just as the latter was blind to the doings of Pinckney. Nothing short of a snapped line or a tornado would have broken the spell holding these two gentlemen in its keeping.

"He's makin' for the outer bed again," cried Joe, "and once he gets tangled up in that rope kelp, it's good-bye to him."

But the Colonel had no idea of letting the big fish have its way. The steady and systematic pressure of the brake told its tale, and, unable to endure the continuous strain, the bass slung round and began heading this time along a line that would bring him close past the stern of Pinckney's yawl.

The Sunfish, following, now for the first time perceived the close proximity of the other boat.

"We'll clear her all right," said Joe. "No, we won't. Pinckney's fish is striking this way. Hi! Hi! Hi! Put your engine ahead, Bill Bobbins! You cayn't? Break the line! I'll break your head with the boat-huck!"

It was Fate. Pinckney's fish at this moment, making a wonderful semicircular sweep like the sweep of a sword, crossed its line with the line of the Colonel's fish, the lines snapped, and eight hundred pounds' weight of bass went free into the blue domain of the Pacific, whilst the two broken lines wound thread-like in the wind.

The Sunfish approached the Barracuda—that was the name of the Pinckney yawl—and the boatmen and gaffers held themselves in in dead silence, waiting for their betters to open fire; whilst Pinckney, rod in hand, and the Colonel, rod in hand, stood each of them with a foot on the gunnel of his boat, facing one another and almost within touching distance.

These two men, who had fought with and injured one another for years, had never been so close to one another since their youth, except in the motor smash in Richmond, and then a policeman had been between them. Furious, yet recognising that it was the fault of neither, speechless before this outrage committed against them by luck, they stood till all of a sudden, like a great white light, the absurdity of themselves and the beauty and humour of the whole position broke upon them.

"The Colonel, he was standin' there with his boot on the gunnel of the yawl," said Joe, detailing the occurrence later to a select company at the inn, "and I was layin' for the boat-huck to land Bill Bobbins one with the butt of it, not that he could 'a' helped the bisness, but his big fat face was risin' the gall in me. Well, I was layin' for the boat-huck when the Colonel broke out laffin'.

"Mind you, that fish was all four hundred, and the iron as good as in him, and that chap broke out laffin'. But that wasn't all. Pinckney stood there a moment, lookin' as if he was tryin' to swallow hisself, and then what does he do—he breaks out laffin'! I never did see such a pair of laffin' hyenas, and then old Bill Bobbins goes off, and at the sight of that face splittin' in two I goes off myself, and Micky follows soot. A girls' school taken with the cackles was nowhere besides that cargo of jackasses, till the Colonel, he orders the lot of us into the Barracuda, and makes Pinckney step aboard the Sunfish. Then off they go home—that pair of' lovey-doveys—thick as them Katzejammer kids in The N'York American.

"Well, folks, it gets me. Them two fightin' all their lives, knifin' one another, and then goin' on like that. What was there to laff about? They say them two chaps hadn't spoke for thirty years, and the two families, when they met by chance on the front, you could see their noses liftin'; and now the whole lot's as thick as thieves, and the young Cal's due to marry the Pinckney girl."

And he did. And it seems to me, so strangely do things happen, that the happiest marriage I have ever known was the outcome of the meeting of two fish.

 

Copyright, 1916, by H. de Vere Stacpoole, in the United States of America.