172 Fish Stories 



fisherman, who needed the ministrations of the church. 

 Father Malone was a Dominican, and his mouth watered at 

 the sight of the splendid fish, but seeing the opportunity to 

 inflict upon himself a moral castigation of the stomach, 

 denied himself, and sent the bass over to the widow Romero, 

 whose husband had been a Venetian gondolier in days gone 

 by. She, in the goodness of her heart, thought it was too 

 much of a blessing for her in Lent, so she took it to the old 

 mother of Billy Fogarty, the crawfish man, who had lost his 

 traps in a gale at San Nicolas that spring. Here the fish 

 found rest until the next morning, when this good woman, 

 thinking of some penances she could inflict upon her soul, 

 and stirred by the talk of the priest that night, forwarded 

 the fish by one of her boys to Francisco Salvatierra, who 

 cleaned the light at Point Firmin. 



One might think that the end had come, but Francisco 

 was well burdened with years, and had vowed to eat no 

 meat or fish for forty days, on account of a transaction 

 which he had confessed to, and meeting Antonio Benichi, a 

 net hauler of the Bend, going home, he offered the bass to 

 him, and the next day the fish reached the Bend again, still 

 holding together as became a bass, still intact, but owing to 

 the warm winds, somewhat the worse for wear and white in 

 the gills, after the fashion of the tribe; indeed it had, by 

 this time, due to its continued journeying, " an ancient and 

 fishlike smell." It is said there were other transfers, of 

 which the record is lost, but on the day of San Xavier, the 

 fourth day of its travels, the good father was sitting by 

 Barney — the original owner — as he mended his nets, and 

 talking on the subject of religion and the necessity of penance 

 for sin, when the son of one Tony Roscali, a seiner, came 

 along and laid down a gunny sack in front of Barney, from 

 which rose a keen and penetrating odor. Out of it he took 

 a dilapidated, sunken-eyed, white-gilled bass, saying that his 

 father had sent it, with the blessings of Heaven, remember- 

 ing the goodness of Barney, when his sister-in-law's mother 



