170 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 29, 1911. 
son. There is no such thing as the prohibition 
of the sale of game, nevertheless game is more 
abundant in a thickly populated country than it 
is with 11s, and the reason is that the matter of 
game preservation is treated in a sane and prac¬ 
tical way and a fairly uniform system prevails 
among the different villages in regard to the 
management of their shooting closes and leas- 
A SEA-FARING man with a cracked basso 
profundo voice was mixing eight stanzas 
and a chorus of a ribald ballad with the 
pounding surf one night and attracted our atten¬ 
tion. To our unnautical ears, accustomed to the 
wind song of the pines and the babble of brooks, 
only a single line, “There’s forty-nine kinds of 
fish a-swimmin’ in the sea,” was intelligible. 
This kept running through our minds so per¬ 
sistently during the early evening, while we were 
planning for the day to come that we sent for 
the captain and told him that in the morning 
we would go where the wind listeth in quest of 
variety. 
The captain scratched his beardless chin, ad¬ 
justed a small cigar between his three teeth—we 
always gave him small, thin cigars because acro¬ 
batically he was an adept at holding them after 
the preliminary contortions to get them prop¬ 
erly balanced and adjusted—and observed with 
a squint at the sky: 
“Nice day to-morrer. Yes it will be a splen¬ 
did day. Suppose we go off Promised Land 
way and begin our fishing, the wind will con¬ 
tinue to hold sou’east and ’ll take us out flying.” 
“Hold on captain,” I interrupted; “didn't we 
smell something akin to an over-ripe chunk of 
liver sweeping out of the northeast the other 
day ?” 
“That, my boy, was the bunker factories over 
on the Promised Land. I suppose menhaden is 
the proper name for them fish. They’re a good 
deal like herring, sweet to eat and as bony 
as all get out. I’ve never been around a bunker 
factory, but them that has says they make the 
finest kind of olive oil, and a purty good grade 
of fertilizer. We’ll keep off more toward Ram's 
Head and maybe we’ll get hold of some yaller- 
mouths.” 
As none of our party knew a yellowmouth 
from a dog’s ear, I had to interrupt again for 
an explanation. He very carefully explained 
that they were sea bass and that settled where 
we were to go. Doc and I did not propose to 
listen to another one of Billy Birdsall’s sea bass 
stories without having one of our own to re¬ 
late, or at least be able to say that we had fished 
for them, smell or no smell. 
We were off early in the morning, for the 
captain said that the best time to catch sea bass 
was during the lull of the waters before the 
turn of the tide. For bait we had clams, fid- 
ing of same. Each of the sub-divisions of the 
German Empire enacts its own laws as to the 
open and closed season, while the villages make 
their own leases, and the village residents unite 
in protecting game for the simple reason that 
the more abundant the game is in any shoot¬ 
ing close, the higher rental the village receives 
from the lessees.” —Editor.] 
diers and mummies, and anchoring the boat fore 
and aft, we began fishing in about fifty feet of 
water at exactly the right time, but the bass evi¬ 
dently had an off day, and after patiently dang¬ 
ling a pound of lead on a small rope, accord¬ 
ing to the captain's directions, and trying vari¬ 
ous baits on rod and reel for an hour or so, we 
developed a grouch and deserted the seaweed 
and rock-strewn mussel beds for fresher and 
more favorable fields. We tacked back to the 
spindle; this is a red pole with an iron cage and 
a gull’s nest on top that the Government has 
sunk in the bay to mark the channel and warn 
shipping to keep north of Gull Rocks. This was 
where the porgies were supposed to lie. The 
captain warned us that porgies had not been 
very plentiful in local waters for some time, 
nevertheless we wanted to see for ourselves, so 
we hove to, dropped anchor and fished. 
Fully expecting to get a boat load of porgies 
or possibly weakfish, we put out both rods and 
hand lines. I was taking a lesson in the art 
of half hitching a line to an oar lock when Doc 
had a bite and began pulling in hand over hand. 
He managed to get his catch within two fathoms 
of the boat when away went hook, line and 
sinker. You should have seen the look on his 
face. I had seen it before, accompanied by 
language that the big boss would not permit in 
our office on two or three occasions when he 
lost a trout that would be a joy to yarn about 
forever, so I knew what was coming. 
“What was it?” I asked before he had time 
to put his feelings in words. 
“That was a big catfish,” he howled, “and 
I’ll bet four dollars that you could have hurled 
one of Delmonico’s largest dinner plates down 
his throat with ease.” 
A flock of incoming ducks momentarily at¬ 
tracted our attention and he forgot his anger 
while he put on a new set of hooks, and with a 
short, swift, bolo swinging motion cast some 
thirty or more feet from the boat. Hardly had 
the line touched the bottom before he had a 
bite and the fish hooked. 
“Good heavens, what’s that?” he cried, catch¬ 
ing sight of a white glistening body in the water. 
“Get an oar to kill the thing with when I get 
him close enough.” I caught up an oar and 
stood ready for any emergency. 
“Belay as ye ar’,” ordered the captain, picking 
up a hatchet. “He’s got a tremendous big skate.” 
After a little maneuvering, Doc managed to 
get the fish ciose to the boat, and the captain 
ended the struggle with a swift blow of the 
hatchet. 
Doc had a skate aboard. Three more fisher¬ 
men wanted one, but they did not seem to be ac¬ 
quired with the same speed and efficiency as the 
land skate. After a bit we discovered that a 
big chunk of skate baited on one of the lines 
would furnished a new and more interesting 
diversion. All the dogfish in the bay seemed 
to want a little skate, too, and as they proved 
fairly difficult to land with a light rod and 
tackle, we devoted the balance of the afternoon 
to dogfish, catching quite a number that varied 
from eighteen to twenty-four inches in length. 
These we told the captain he might present to 
any needy soul desirous of obtaining a small 
quantity of first class fertilizer for his garden. 
For ten long days we had been afflicted with 
duck fever. Duck fever is a malady that afflicts 
a comparatively limited number of the inhabi¬ 
tants of Uncle Sam's domain. People who are 
not sportsmen are practically immune, and the 
only sound that wiil stir their blood is the cold 
brassy shriek of the speeding auto, which is 
conducive to profanity fever, a mild momentary 
disease that bears no resemblance to duck fever, 
trout fever, hunting fever or any of the kindred 
ailments that sportsmen are heir to and which 
every spring and fall are more trouble to the 
boss than home-made trouble. 
The first raw, chilly winds of the northland 
started the procession of migratory waterfowl 
early in September and each passing day was 
bringing its quota of south-bound ducks to the 
bays and inlets' to incite the restless hunting 
fever in our bones. At first they dribbled along 
in pairs and trios and remained well away from 
shore and far out of gun range, then a sudden 
cold snap accompanied by a high wind which 
raged all night brought them out of the north 
in flocks of considerable size. Throughout Wed¬ 
nesday, Thursday and Friday, the last three days 
of the closed season, old squaws, scoters, black- 
ducks and mergansers, which the captain, who 
knew ducks just as he knew sea water from 
quinine, called “worthless coots,” kept drifting 
over Mashomack Point and settling down on the 
quieter waters of the shores and bays. 
“Ducks are mostly thicker here when the law 
is on ’em,” explained the captain, “but you boys 
just wait until Saturday and we’ll take the 
Goosehopper and sail around until we get some. 
Just make your plans and leave it to me.” 
Making plans was all we could do without 
violating the game laws, so we were forced to 
rest content with watching the flocks come in 
and studying the weather. 
“Be ready in the morning,” said the captain 
the night before the season opened. “A norther 
is brewing and wiil drive the ducks in.” 
Sure enough, Saturday morning dawned dark 
and dreary. An increasing wind was blowing 
out of the north and the bay was covered with 
dancing whitecaps. There was scarcely a boat 
to be seen on the water, but that did not seem 
to worry the captain, and Doc and I were too 
intent on getting ducks to give the wind more 
than scant consideration. 
“We’d better try them off Barcelona way first,” 
announced the captain as he hoisted sail. “I 
reckon we’ll find ducks there before the day is 
Haphazard Adventures of Four 
Landlubbers 
By CARL S. SHAFER 
IV.— In Quest of Variety—Conclusion 
