40 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



mess at Gib., contrived to make out of such 

 unpromising material. 



The next day, the same line, indeed the same 

 hook, gave me a keen disappointment, which was 

 however, no more than I deserved. In the brutal 

 fashion of pier-fishing of those days, I lowered 

 the greater part of a fresh herring on the hook, 

 made all fast, then went upstairs to buy a paper, 

 or light a cigarette or something equally irrelevant. 

 Thither, almost immediately, flew a breathless 

 attendant with the intelligence that there was 

 something pulling at my line " like the devil." 

 There was hardly enough line out for his diagnosis 

 of the disturbance to be taken literally, so I sus- 

 pected a bass. Sure enough, a fine fellow, thirty 

 inches or so by the looks of him,ten or twelve pounds 

 weight by the pull, was soon brought struggling 

 to the surface. The manner of his undoing re- 

 flected no credit on either of us, but, if he had 

 been over greedy, he was now over-strong. Having 

 fretted the hook against the post, a favourite 

 trick with bass, if allowed enough slack line, he 

 gave a final wrench and, just as the pier-master 

 gave him a stab with the gaff that only hastened 

 matters, he fell back with a splash that brought a 

 sympathetic groan from the bystanders. 



Memory recalls a similar wave of unappreciated 

 sympathy amid very different scenes. Instead 

 of a south coast pier in the strong light of an 



