THE SEA FISHER IN FOREIGN PARTS 479 



minutes the entire deck echoes with the rub-a-dub of fresh 

 arrivals. 



It is scarcely sport it is a piscatorial battue. You are 

 hauling up from the bottom, fathoms down, a burden which 

 taxes all the strength and makes the perspiration ooze from 

 every pore ; yet it is grand fun for a while. The fish bite 

 fast and furious. As your line, after yielding its captive, is 

 recast, it throws out coruscations of silver in its rapid descent. 

 Soon your eye discerns, fathoms deep, an almost impalpable 

 flashing to and fro, as if a burnished platter were gyrating 

 in an eddy ; it assumes a lovely pink hue as you bring it 

 nearer the surface, and then, in a twinkling, a burly schnapper 

 of seven or eight pounds is flapping vigorously and noisily on 

 deck. Sometimes it is a fish at every haul, and, under those 

 circumstances, not the least amusing feature of the sport is the 

 spectacle of a score of excited men jumping round a score of 

 big fish which are doing their best to convey their amazement 

 and indignation to an unfeeling world. 



The schnapper is, like nearly all the fishes of these waters, 

 beautifully tinted, and the prevailing colour is rose pink, 

 speckled with turquoise blue. It is a thick, broad-sided fellow, 

 as if originally intended for one of the bream tribe. The 

 resemblance to the bream, however, ceases at the top of the 

 shoulders, where there is a bony hump and a sharply sloping, 

 undulating ridge of bone down to the mouth, which is horny 

 and well furnished with teeth. You deposit your game, not in 

 the familiar creel, but in a sack bag, knowing full well that at 

 the wharf at Brisbane by-and-bye there will be an astonishing 

 number of acquaintances, who happen to be passing just 

 by accident of course and who will somehow walk away 

 with a brace of fish dangling from a bit of spun yarn. The 

 schnapper is, in fact, excellent eating. It does not come amiss 

 in any shape boiled and served with shrimp sauce ; fried 



