The Swan and Her Crew

  CHAPTER XXI.

  Fishing.--Jimmy's Dodge.--Bream-fishing.--Good Sport.-- Fecundity of Fish.--Balance Float.--Fish-hatching.-- Edith Rose.--A Night Sail.

  It must not be supposed that the boys neglected that most fascinating ofall sports, fishing. They fished in the broads and rivers whenever theyhad an opportunity. Pike, perch, bream, and eels--all were fish thatcame to their net; and now that birds' nesting was over they devotedsome special days to the pursuit of the gentle art.

  Some years ago, and at the time of my story, the broads were as full asthey could be of coarse fish, especially pike; but by the indiscriminateuse of the net and the destruction of spawning fish, the poachers haveso thinned the water of pike and perch, that the proprietors arepreserving them, and the public are agitating for a close time atcertain seasons of the year, so as to protect the breeding fish. Even atthe present time, however, the bream is so abundant as to afford plentyof sport to every fisher, however poor he may be. In shape this fish issomething like a pair of bellows and it is commonly met with from one tofive pounds in weight. It swarms in vast shoals and when it is in themood for biting, you may catch as many as you like--and more sometimes,for the bream is not a nice fish to handle; it is covered with thickglutinous slime, which sticks to and dries on the hands and clothes.Bream-fishers provide themselves with a cloth, with which to handle thefish and wipe off the slime.

  One morning Frank, while dressing at his open window, looked at thebroad and was surprised to see it dotted with round, bright colouredobjects.

  "What can they be?" he said to himself in surprise. "They cannot betrimmers. They look like bladders, but who would paint bladders red,blue, green, and yellow? I am going to see."

  He dressed rapidly and ran towards the water. Standing on the margin wasJimmy, his hands in his pockets and a self-satisfied smile on his face.

  "What have you been doing Jimmy?" said Frank.

  "Oh! I thought you would be astonished. I bought the whole stock of oneof those fellows who sell India-rubber balloons, and I thought I wouldhave a great haul of fish; so I fastened a line and hook to each balloonand set them floating before the wind. Don't you think it a granddodge?"

  "Well, you are a funny fellow. I call it a poaching trick, of which youought to be ashamed, Master Jimmy but I suppose you are not. I expectthese balloons will burst directly a big fish pulls them a little underthe water. There goes one now; I saw it disappear,--and there's another,with a pop you can hear at this distance."

  BREAM.]

  Jimmy began to look rather blue, and said, "Hadn't we better go offafter them in a boat, or we shall lose all our lines? All we had arefastened to them."

  "Oh, you sinner! you don't mean to say that you have used ourjoint-stock lines?"

  "Yes, I have."

  "Then we had better go out at once."

  They got into the punt and rowed off after the toy balloons, which werefloating swiftly before the breeze. The first they came up to had asmall perch on. The next burst just as they reached it, and they saw theglimmer of a big fish in the water. There were twenty balloons set onthe water, and it took them a long hour's work before they could recoverall that were to be recovered. Out of twenty they only brought in ten.The rest had burst, and the lines were lost. Of the ten which theyrecovered five had small perch on, which were not worth having. SoJimmy's grand scheme turned out a failure, as so many grand schemes do.The others chaffed him very much about it, as a punishment for losingthe lines, and for doing anything on his own hook without consulting theothers.

  After a wet week in July it was resolved to have a good day's breamfishing. The broad itself was more adapted for perch and pike, for ithad a clear gravel bottom; and the river was always considered the bestfor bream, because its bottom was more muddy, and bream like soft muddyground. The boys collected an immense quantity of worms, and taking onboard a bag of grains for ground-bait, they sailed one Friday eveningdown to Ranworth and selected a likely spot in the river on the outsideof a curve. They proceeded to bait the place well with grains and worms,and then went to sleep, with a comfortable certainty of sport on themorrow.

  The white morning dawned and made visible a grey dappled sky, the silentmarsh and the smooth river, off which the mists were slowly creeping.Small circles marked where the small fish were rising, but all aboutwhere the ground-bait had been put the water was as still as death. Thefish were at the bottom, picking up the last crumbs and greedily wishingfor more.

  Frank was the first to rise. "Now then, you lazy fellows, it is time tobegin. There is a soft south wind and the fish are waiting. We will justrun along the bank to have a dip away from our fishing-ground, and thenwe will begin."

  After their bathe their rods were soon put together. Dick fished withpaste made of new bread and coloured with vermilion. Jimmy had some waspgrubs, and Frank used worms. They tossed up for stations, and Dick wasposted at the bows, Jimmy, amidships, and Frank at the stern. The hookswere baited, and the floats were soon floating quietly down the stream.Frank had a float which gave him a longer swim than his companions. Itwas made as follows. The stem of the float was of quill (two joinedtogether) eight inches long, and was thrust through a small round corkwhich was fixed in the middle of it. The upper end of the float wasweighted with shots, so that it lay flat on the water. The weight at thehook end was so placed, that when a bite took place the float sprangupright and remained so, this calling attention to the fact of a bite ata great distance. Frank was thus able to let his float swim down theriver much farther than he could have done with an ordinary one, becausehe could distinguish a bite farther off.

  Before the floats had completed their first swim, Dick cried "I have abite."

  "So have I," said Frank.

  "And so have I," added Jimmy.

  "How absurd," said Frank, as they were all engaged with a fish at thesame time. All three fishes were too large to land without alanding-net, and Dick held Frank's rod while he helped to land Jimmy'sfish, and then Jimmy helped to land the others.

  The fishes were as nearly as possible three pounds each, greatslab-sided things, which gave a few vigorous rushes and then succumbedquietly to the angler.

  And so the sport went on. At every swim one or the other of them had abite, and as they did not choose to lose time by using the cloth toevery fish, they were soon covered with the slime off them, which driedon their white flannels and made them in a pretty mess.

  "In what immense numbers these fish must breed," said Dick.

  ANGLING.]

  "Yes," answered Frank, "fish of this kind lay more eggs than those ofthe more bold and rapacious kind, such as the perch and pike. I haveread that 620,000 eggs have been counted in the spawn of a big carp. Yousee that so many of the young are destroyed by other fish that this is anecessary provision of nature. I once saw the artificial breeding oftrout by a way which I have never told you of, and it was mostinteresting. It was in Cheshire, where some gentlemen had preserved atrout-stream and wished to keep up the stock. Into the large stream asmall rivulet ran down a cleft in the bank like a small ravine, and inthis cleft they had built their sheds. The trout-spawn was placed introughs which had bottoms made of glass rods side by side, closeenough together to prevent the eggs falling through, but wide enough tolet the water pass through freely. Over these troughs a continual streamof water was directed. The eggs were pale yellow in colour when alive,but if one of them became addled or dead it turned white, and it wasthen picked off by means of a glass tube, up which it was sucked by theforce of capillary attraction without disturbing the other eggs. By andby you could see a little dot in the eggs. This got larger and largeruntil the covering burst, and the fish came out, with a littletransparent bag bigger than themselves attached to their stomachs. Theyate nothing until this dried up, and they lived upon what they absorbedout of it. When the fish were about an inch long they were put intosmall pools up the brook, where they were watched very carefully by thekeeper, who set traps for rats and herons. Then as the
y got bigger theywere put into larger pools, and finally into the river."

  TROUT.]

  "I did not know that water-rats ate fish," said Jimmy.

  "No, water-rats don't, although many people think they do. They liveonly on vegetable food, and it is a pity to kill them; but the commonrat, which is as often seen by the river side as the other, will eatfish, or whatever it can get."

  It would be tedious to recount the capture of every fish, since one wasso like another. The sport far exceeded their expectations, or anythingthey had previously experienced; and before six o'clock in the eveningthey had caught over three hundred fishes, big and little, the largestabout five pounds in weight. The total weight was about twelve stone.Norfolk bream fishers will know that I am not exaggerating.

  "I am thoroughly tired of this," said Dick at length; "this is notsport, it is butchery, especially as we do not know what to do with themnow we have caught them, except to give them to some farmer for manure."

  "No," said Frank; "that is why I do not care much for bream fishing, orany sport where one cannot use the things one kills; but we will givethe best of these fish to old Matthew Cox and his wife, who have nothingbut the parish allowance to live on. I dare say they will be glad enoughof them."

  Cox, who was a poor old man scarce able to keep body and soul together,was glad indeed to have them, but their number puzzled him, until Mrs.Brett suggested that he should pickle them, and gave him some vinegarfor the purpose.

  Contrary to Frank's expectation, the wind had not risen, but towards theafternoon died away, and with the exception of a shower, so summerlikethat the gnats danced between the rain-drops, the day had been very fineand calm. When the boys left off fishing the water was as calm as atfive o'clock in the morning, and there was not the slightest chance oftheir reaching home that night. This was awkward, as the next day wasSunday, and they had no change of raiment with them. They made the bestof it, sending a note home by post to explain their absence. In themorning there was a debate as to whether they should go to church ornot.

  "Let us go," said Frank. "No one will know us, so it does not matterwhat we have on."

  So to church they went, in their dirty white flannels. It was theirintention to sit near the door and try to escape observation, but theyfound the back seats of the little church full of children, and achurchwarden ushered them all the way up the church to the front pew,which they took. Just before the service began, a lady and gentleman,and a young lady who was apparently their daughter, came into the largesquare pew in which our boys sat, whereupon the tanned cheeks of ourheroes blushed vehemently. The young lady sat opposite Frank, and everynow and then gazed at him curiously. When Frank mustered up courage tolook back at her, he thought he knew the face, and as the sermonadvanced he recollected that it was that of a friend of his sisterMary's, who had once stayed at his father's house. When they left thechurch he went up to her, and taking off his cap, said,

  "I beg your pardon, but are you not Miss Rose?"

  "Yes, Mr. Merivale, but I thought you would not have remembered me.Papa, this is Mary Merivale's brother."

  Mr. Rose looked rather curiously at Frank and his friends, and Frank atonce answered the unspoken question by saying,

  "We are yachting, sir, and we are windbound, without any change ofclothes. We should have been ashamed to come to church if we had thoughtwe should meet anyone we knew."

  "I am very glad to have met you. You and your friends must come and dinewith me," was Mr. Rose's reply.

  So, in spite of their slimy-covered clothes and fishy smell, they werewelcomed, and had a pleasant day. Edith Rose was so very pretty andnice, that Frank began to think Dick was not quite such a goose forbeing spoons on his sister, as he had previously thought him.

  About ten they returned to the yacht, and found that the wind had risen,and was blowing tolerably hard. As they were anxious to get back in timeto be with Mr. Meredith on Monday morning, they resolved to sit up untiltwelve o'clock and then start homeward. The night was starlight, andlight enough for them to see their way on the water; and as the hands ontheir watches pointed to twelve they hoisted sail and glided awaythrough the grey stillness of the night, beneath the starlit blue of themidnight sky, with no sound audible save the hissing of the watercurling against their bows, the flapping of the sails as they tacked,and the occasional cry of a bird in the reeds; and about five o'clockthey arrived home, and turned in on board the yacht for a couple ofhours' sleep before breakfast.