OUR ISLANDS 149 



and no one told you that gloves are worn when 

 fishing ; at frequent intervals you strike yourself on 

 the chin with the large knobby piece of wood on 

 which you coil each hard-won inch. At last with 

 a rush, a gi-eat ugly head, with gaping jaws, pops 

 out of water alongside, and standing up, to the im- 

 minent peril of the boat, you give one mighty heave 

 and sit down suddenly, sometimes on the fish, some- 

 times with the fish in your lap. Naturally you 

 emit a few piercing shrieks during all this, to the 

 intense disgust of your masculine companion. In 

 the process of recovering the hook and spoon, which 

 have often been entirely swallowed, you acquire sev- 

 eral wounds, and if I were writing a brochure con- 

 taining Hints to Fishermen I should emphatically 

 say, "Never, never get your fingers into the gills 

 of a grouper." Then you gasp twice, throw out 

 the line again and proceed as before. Now and 

 then a fish, that by rights should be dead, slides 

 stealthily along the bottom of the boat and deals 

 you a tremendous smack with his tail. That usually 

 incites the rest of the alleged corpses to imitation, 

 and you feel like a Pilgrim Father running the 

 gauntlet in a distinctly unfriendly Indian village. 



Our catch consisted almost entirely of groupers, 

 — big mottled fish whose voracity passes belief. 

 After a while we found that it was not even nec- 

 essary to troll for them; from the stationary boat 

 the hook and spoon would be snapped up before 

 more than a few feet of line were paid out. 



Betty hooked one large Spanish mackerel, which 

 put up a lively fight, and between us we also caught 



