m 



BASS 163 



The tide was dead low upon the flat sand, and 

 in the shallow wash hundreds of bass, their back- 

 fins sticking out of the water, were chasing, and 

 feeding on, the sand-eels. Very quietly we shot 

 the seine-net around a likely shoal, then hauled 

 with the utmost care, so that not a single sunken 

 cork nor a trip of the foot-rope should leave a way 

 of escape. 



As the seine came in the bass swam madly 

 round, like a fleet of green-backed torpedoes 

 gone amuck. We dragged, lifted, and lurched 

 the punt nearly clear of the sea. And at that 

 moment the tide turned. It flowed in round our 

 feet, flowed under, above, and through the net. 

 On all sides bass found just enough water to turn 

 themselves the right way up and swim. Out they 

 darted, gave a flip or two, and were gone. To 

 have hauled the net still higher would have meant 

 losing more. Into the water we plunged, there- 

 fore, the six of us who were there, catching the bass 

 by their tails, hooking our fingers under their gills, 

 scooping them out upon the dry sand, throwing 

 them into the punt, and even kicking them up the 

 beach. Their sharp dorsal fins and the spines 

 upon their gills tore our hands till the blood came. 

 Some of them, when they flapped, were too strong 



