eee 
HIGH HOOK AT AVALON 231 
boatman, who accepted the situation com- 
placently and made a trial, drawing across 
the school, plainly seen below in thousands, 
rather than vertically through them. 
The anglers leaned back in the two 
chair-seats attached to a board facing the 
stern, and good naturedly tossed a coin 
for the first luckless sardine. 
A brown, bewhiskered face like a terrier’s 
rose at their side, with a ‘‘pouf-f-f” of out- 
blown air. The seal leaned back and 
blinked at them inquiringly. Apparently 
satisfied of their unimportance, he sniffed 
rather contemptuously, threw his neck 
“over his shoulder,” hitting the water with 
the back of his head, and was swallowed 
without a ripple. 
““Gosh, me lads,” the boatman cried 
gleefully, ‘‘we’re in for it, sure! Why, this 
bay is crammed with bait from floor to 
roof. I never seen the likes, I never did!”’ 
His snagging had yielded two on his maiden 
effort and no time was thrown away in 
getting the®lively chaps overboard, the 
yellowtail hook being thrust through the 
back just beneath the dorsal fin, allowing 
the bait full play to flutter about and draw 
the big fellows. For six hundred feet or so, 
clear across the harbor, the “‘flick-flick”’ of 
myriad sardines could be seen, flecking the 
green with tiny white suds, here, there, 
yonder, their masses distinctly tinting the 
areas they occupied a dull violet against 
the emerald. 
“Tf this don’t mean business, I’m a 
tenderfoot. That’s the boy! Soak it to 
him! Ah, me hearty, turn loose on him, 
now, me lad!’ 
The raucous note of the huge multiplier 
shrilly proclaimed the struggle was on. 
Lyte, the Pennsylvanian, was vainly jabbing 
both thumbs on his leather reel-brake, 
while the line fairly leaped through the 
agate guides and down into the depths, 
irresistibly demanded by some tremendous 
force running rampage below. Ted, the 
New Englander, suddenly stood erect and 
held hard on his rig, the duet of reels 
stimulating ‘‘Cap” to a frenzy of encour- 
agement—and abuse of the unknown at 
the lines’ ends. Occasionally interrupting, 
unable to be inactive at such a time, he 
wildly snagged and snagged again, letting 
off steam at the expense of numberless 
sardines. 
Ted’s tormentor played coward, as his 
tribe is wont to do; after divers sword- 
thrust runs, a seven-pound barracuda, long, 

LOVERS’ COVE, WHERE THE WHITE BASS LIE, IN THE HARBOR AT AVALON 
