252 Life in the Open 



such a day I hooked a bass off the kelp beds and lost it, 

 then with a camera photographed a more fortunate 

 angler, whose boat was rushing away with a wave of 

 foam beneath her stern, despite the vigorous efforts of 

 the boatman. Again I hooked a bass that with a bril- 

 liant burst of speed took three hundred feet from the 

 reel and carried the boat on with surprising force. It 

 is always the largest fish that escapes, and this is usually 

 the " record-breaker." I could hardly move it, and the 

 line sang and hummed like a lute touched by some 

 mystic fingers deep in the sea. It was a question of 

 stopping the bass before it reached the kelp bed, half a 

 mile offshore. For twenty minutes I vainly lifted and 

 essayed to reel, each moment the fish nearing the 

 dreaded kelp forest. 



The approved and only possible method of proced- 

 ure was to raise the rod gradually with both hands, then 

 lower it quickly, reeling as it dropped, but I believe I 

 never swayed this monster far from the even tenor of 

 its way. Exhausted, I handed the rod to a companion ; 

 he too failed, and the great fish, now but a memory, 

 dashed into the kelp, and passed out of history, leaving 

 a dangling line alone to tell the story. 



It was near the end of the season that Don Antonio 

 crushed his rivals among the boatmen of Avalon. The 

 long days of summer were growing shorter, the cool 

 winds that had made the island an ideal spot for angling 

 were dying down, and day after day the sea lay like a 

 mirror, its surface cut by shoals of innumerable fish. 



