116 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



Pier at Dover, from parts of which we often ex- 

 perienced difficulty with the shorter rods in clear- 

 ing the projecting buttresses. My hands tightly 

 grasp the butt ; the check is on the winch ; and 

 as soon as all the slack line is out, I sweep the rod 

 back over the shoulder, and the maddened bass, 

 with the hook driven well home in his throat, 

 goaded by the unlocked for sting in that seemingly 

 harmless offal, races off as if nothing would stop 

 him short of the French coast. Yet the increasing 

 drag of fifty, sixty, seventy yards of wet line gives 

 him pause in his headlong career, and I manage 

 to get his head round, and even to get ten or 

 fifteen yards of line back on the reel. This seems 

 to have given him new inspiration ; for he tries 

 a trick that I have had played on me by both 

 sharks and garfish, but rarely indeed by bass, 

 He swims with all his might towards the boat, 

 slackening the line faster than even the five-inch 

 reel can get it home, then, of a sudden, away he 

 dashes at right angles, in under the cliff. If he only 

 knew it, the odds must be seven to three in his 

 favour, for there are rocky knives at hand, against 

 the edge of which the line would cut like gossamer 

 thread. His spirits seem to have recovered, for 

 he is now careering among the rocks on the swirl 

 of the rising tide, and any moment may, as I am 

 fully aware, bring the closure. Here evidently 

 is no ordinary bass tasting steel for the first time, 



