comes back, gives her a friendly crank 
—and she’s ready fer another session. 
Gointa fish?” 
“We thought we’d try it a while be- 
fore we move on,” I answered, “black 
bass. Any luck?” 
“Tf I had as many dollars as there 
are bass in this canal—this far out 
on it,’ was the emphatic rejoinder, 
“T’d be richer than th’ man that manu- 
factures them cars we was atalkin’ 
about. Me—I just started, but I’ll get 
‘em. A few weeks back, howsomever 
—they was all sort of filled with little 
worms — no good — everyone you’d 
catch was that way. All right now. 
Bass is my favorites. I’ve fished fer 
’em ever since I could walk—and in a 
lot of different waters. Got so bad 
my friends called me ‘Black Bass Joe.’ 
I’d rather have one bass than a bucket- 
full of rainbows. That’s me. These 
bass in here are—sort of funny-like. 
Got t’ know just how t’ catch ’em.” 
We alighted from our rough-voyage 
champion and walked over to the barge. 
The immense dipper-dredge, surround- 
ed by barrels of oil, litter attendant 
upon such work and the grotesque 
masses of fantastic limestone, seemed 
out of place against such a background. 
Dredging had proceeded right up to 
the center of a sizeable hammock, and 
the vines and trees and even flowers 
dangled down against the monster 
which was wounding them so grievous- 
ly. Here was the true tropic atmos- 
phere of the true ’Glades. 
And Sonnyboy was in an ecstatic 
whirl of romance. This was what his 
imagination had painted. 
“Take black-bass fishing up in Penn- 
sylvania, where I come from,” rambled 
on our new-found friend; “th’ season 
opens in June and keeps right on t’ 
December. We got rules as makes 
sportsmen be-have, too. Length limit, 
mine inches, and nobody is t’ take 
mor’n a dozen in a day. : 
“Also, just a single rod an’ line or 
one handline—with never no more than 
three hooks attached. I’ve tried every- 
thing from minnow-swimmers t’ frog- 
babies, but give me a shimmyin’, wrig- 
gling, twistin’, dancin’ piece o’ pork 
rind! Take a look at th’ two lines I 
got fixed up here now—one has a spe- 
cial rig—a little fancy spoon up ahead 
uv th’ pork; th’ other is what you 
might say was hemstitched with a piece 
of bright red yarn—this here was taken 
from th’ shirt uv our superintendent 
when he wasn’t lookin’.” 
“What for?” blurted out Sonnyboy, 
who was all attention. 
“Fer th’ same reason that side-shows 
uses them bright-colored pictures out- 
side at a circus,’ explained “Black 
Bass Joe’; “curiosity —t’ make ’em 
wonder. A bass is an inquisitive bird! 
Page 37 
Anything out of th’ ordinary makes 
him un-comfortable. He’s got to know 
what an’ why.” 
And we had brought no neat bottle 
of pork rind in our tackle-box! But, 
for all Joe’s enthusiasm in this direc- 
tion, I could not keep my eyes from a 
shallow section of the canal, near the 
shore, where a school of energetic min- 
nows could be plainly observed even at 
this distance. Here was, indeed, the 
natural food of the bass. 
July and August had brought my 
best luck with them, but I was not un- 
familiar with luck of equal signifi- 
cance which came at all other periods. 
“Artificials early in the season—and 
late,” had been drummed into my ears, 
however, by a veteran who took his 
bass too seriously. 
There had been one night expedition, 
and another, very late in the day of a 
cloudy hour of superfortune, when the 
artificials gave me my limit—casting 
with silver shiner or the mud minnow. 
The glint of radiant light of the for- 
mer, and the rich, golden, yellowish 
glow of the later had proved irresis- 
tible! 
But I could not think, just now, of 
dipping into my tackle-box for baubles. 

NOTE WITH WHAT PUGNACIOUS DE- 
TERMINATION THE DREDGE DIGS ITS 
DIPPER INTO THE GLIMMERING WHITE 
MARL AND LIMESTONE OF THE CANAL. 
ITS SLOW GOING, BUT—WELL, SOON 
THE ORIGINAL EVERGLADES WILL DIS- 
APPEAR 
The day was bright and fresh and clear 
and steeped in garish sunshine. And 
the silver shiner is at its best on glow- 
ering days, when the sky is overcast 
and there is shadow on the water. 
The canal was unrippled—not so much 
as a dimple upon its dark-green sur- 
face. (Give me a chub for the bright 
days.) Joe was compelled to admit 
that a mud-minnow has as much life 
as a box of monkeys over a coal fire. 
But he never proved unfaithful to his 
rinds, as long as we knew him, regard- 
less of the weather. 
Some casual inquiries were made 
concerning our projected trip into the 
Everglades. We would fish a little 
while along the canal, but I was far 
more eager to make camp on a far 
hammock and introduce Sonnyboy to 
his first taste of that sort of thing, in 
an entirely new and novel environment. 
We could sample the bass the next day. 
“T wouldn’t spend th’ night over on 
one of them hammicks if you gave me 
one fifteen miles long an’ built a bun- 
galow,” was Joe’s quiet observation; 
“too many queer noises. Too many 
’gators gruntin’ and croakin’ as soon 
as night settles.’ 
“Alligators!” Sonnyboy exclaimed. 
“Sure.” 
“B-big ones?” 
“Out this far,’ said “Black Bass 
Joe,” “there no tellin’ what size you’re 
apt to run into. Them ’Glades is dry- 
in’ up—you know that—and a ’gator 
can’t get along without plenty of wet. 
While we are workin’ here—an’ I ain’t 
exaggeratin’ a bit—we see ’em, little 
baby fellers an’ great, big lumberin’ 
grandaddies, come walkin’ solemnlike 
through th’ saw-grass; peers as if they 
was on a hike from most everywheres, 
but mos’ especial from th’ west’ard. 
‘Plop’ goes a sound, an’ it’s one drop- 
pin’ hisself inter th’ canal, an’ so glad 
t’ get there, with real deep water, that 
he lets outs a bark of joy you can 
hear above th’ dredge noise. If there’s 
one alligator in this canal, it’s full 
length, there’s a hundred thousand. 
Why, reminds me—” 
Joe stopped his narrative and looked 
around to a red spot on the floor of 
the old barge. 
“See that?” 
Sonnyboy stooped and I saw his face 
lose color. 
“Yes, it’s blood!” exclaimed Joe. 
“You can’t teach these youngsters 
nothin’. Monday of this week a party 
of th’ kids that’s studying engineerin’ 
and surveyin’, an’ from Northern col- 
leges, under a big chief, come back dirty 
an’ muck-covered from th’ ’Glades 
where they’d been plantin’ stakes. It 
was just about sundown, an’ they was 
all tuckered out. 
“Somebody suggested a swim in th’ 
canal. An’ Peter says to ’em: ‘Boys, 
go ahead, but watch yerselves. I’ve 
been seein’ some ’gators roundabouts 
that’s entirely too big fer safety—an’ 
I don’t trust ’em. Th’ little fellers is 
as skeert of you as a greenhorn might 
be of them. But when they gets big 
enough to hiss an’ back up when you 
come around—an’ not run t’ cover or 
go under—they mean business.’ 
“Th’ boys just laughed. We was 
washin’ up and paid no more attention 
until, suddenly, there came an awful 
yell—a shriek like. It was all Peter 
could do to get th’ boy up onto th’ 
roadbed before that ’gator had his fill. 
As it was, he lost a piece of his foot; 
we dressed it here on th’ barge an’ 
rushed him back t’ town an’ a doctor. 
