178 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



Either, even in its years of discretion, may be 

 exceptionally hungry and under such stress of 

 appetite lose all judgment and fall a prey to the 

 clumsiest of deception. Again and again some 

 small lad, fishing for the first time in his life from 

 a pier, hooks a bass that experts only dream of. 

 He catches it (according to the books) with the 

 wrong bait and at the wrong stage of the tide ; but 

 he catches it, and the rest does not much matter. 

 His' tackle is a shilling handline, bought at a toy- 

 shop ; but his bass beats any taken by yonder 

 master of the art, whose rod and reel alone must 

 be worth a five pound note. These are the chances 

 of war. To the artist, of course, the capture of 

 such a fish on the finest of tackle would give a 

 thrill that he could never experience from the use 

 of cheap, coarse gear ; but the lad is in all proba- 

 bility no artist, and his joy knows no bounds. 

 The grey mullet of large size is less often betrayed 

 by such rough and ready overtures, but now and 

 again it too, most cunning of salt-water fishes, 

 falls to the poorest temptation. My friend, 

 Surgeon-General Paske, was on one occasion 

 pollack-fishing from, one of the piers at Dover, 

 I forget which at the moment, with the usual 

 paternoster of twisted gut and baiting with rag- 

 worms. Suddenly he found himself in a good 

 fish, which did not bore after the fashion of a pol- 

 lack, but circled in eddies nearer the surface. 



