150 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



There was a song, very popular in those unso- 

 phisticated days, a ballad they would have called 

 it, of which the refrain ran 



I am waiting. I am waiting 

 Just to tell thee how I love thee ! 



Thackeray on the other hand, employed these 

 interludes unprofitably in the narration of 

 Homeric conflicts with enormous grouper. 

 It was admitted that the very largest fish 

 were less plentiful than in days of old, the stock 

 having from all accounts deteriorated through 

 over-fishing. After an interval, which varied 

 from one to three hours, one of us would get a bite, 

 and then followed the proud exercise of hauling 

 a leather] acket, contemptuously abbreviated to 

 " jacket," or some other obscene looking fish 

 (anything rather than that which we had come so 

 far to catch) and despatching it in our precarious 

 eyrie. The leather] acket is one of the trigger- 

 fishes, a thick-skinned, flattened type, in shape 

 not unlike a dory, and having a peculiar back fin, 

 which it can erect at will. On one occasion I 

 remember fishing with Thackeray not far off 

 the Merivery sewer, in fact, as the wind blew from 

 that direction, quite near enough. To make mat- 

 ters more interesting, a trifling shark that looked 

 about nine feet long, but might, so terrified was 



