DAYS WITH BASS 



Greeks who follow the sea as a profession are all but amphibious, 

 and, so far as any harm might be threatened to his clothes, 

 Nikko was well aware that the rags in which he and I used to 

 seek our bass those moonlight daybreaks in the Gulf would not 

 together have fetched the price of a meal, whereas he was a 

 sovereign to the good, with a day's holiday thrown in. 



Other good bass I took out of the Gulf, both on this north 

 shore at Solujak and on the other side, and times and again 

 we fished at night, when the water was all phosphorescent and 

 a perfect choir of rival nightingales trilled and bubbled from 

 the cherry orchards, drowning even the harsh chorus of frogs 

 in the marsh. Cheerfully enough we would stay out those 

 warm summer nights, realising that 



" The lark is but a bumpkin fowl ; 

 He sleeps in his nest till morn," 



until, discouraged by repeated failure, we concluded that the 

 lark knew best, and postponed our activities until the moon 

 was beginning to fade in the light that she loves. All through 

 the day fishing was an impossibility, for even if the sun had not 

 been too fierce for my own comfort, it threw so searching a 

 glare into the crystal clear water as to show up all the angler's 

 poor deceptions, and I never knew a bass taken during the day 

 even by the few residents skilled in the sport. Yet here, again, 

 catching fish was not all of fishing. There were the long and 

 delightful visits to the Armenian fishermen in their hut, where 

 I used to drink coffee and eat mackerel with them, and take 

 their photographs and buy their lobsters and red mullet, and 



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