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In the morning he followed Uncle Terry around the circuit of his lobster traps in the "Gypsy's" boat, with Telly as a companion, and watched the old man hauling and rebaiting those elongated coops and taking out his hideous prizes. The day was a perfect one, the sea just ruffled by a light breeze, and as her first timidity had now worn away, he found Telly a most charming companion.
Before rebaiting it, however, he built a fire to boil his tea-pail, and sat down to eat his lunch. After refreshment, Marasty, being a lazy man, decided to enter the trap from in front, instead of first opening up the rear and entering from that quarter, as he should have done.
It seemed quite a matter of course that we two were to fish, and Bigley wait upon us, opening mussels, rebaiting when necessary, and holding himself ready to take off the fish, should any be caught.
The fish bit at the newly baited hooks from which their brethren had just been taken, and Tom Platt and Long Jack moved methodically up and down the length of the trawl, the boat's nose surging under the wet line of hooks, stripping the sea-cucumbers that they called pumpkins, slatting off the fresh-caught cod against the gunwale, rebaiting, and loading Manuel's dory till dusk.
Advancing in this careful fashion, the scouts had covered many yards, and were now almost within striking distance of the camp. It was at this particular moment that a sudden thing happened calculated to bring matters to a climax. After all that patient waiting, and rebaiting of his hook, the persistence of the fisherman with the crooked rod was rewarded.
They were not large, but still they were fish, and it was most tantalising to one to be patiently waiting, while the other was busy landing and rebaiting and throwing in again. At last a happy thought struck Dexter, and after shifting his float about from place to place, he waited till he saw the boy looking at him, and he said "I say?"
The fisherman, in his dory, goes from one to the other of these lines pulling them in, throwing the fish in the bottom of the boat and rebaiting his hooks. When his dory is full he returns with his load to the schooner if he can find her. That is the peril ever present to the minds of the men in the dory the danger of losing the schooner.
But the cook said: "The luck iss in two pieces. You will find it so when you look. I know." This so tickled Long Jack that he overbore Tom Platt and the two went out together. Underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory, picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to the sea again something like pinning and unpinning linen on a wash-line.
Polly, rebaiting his hook. "She was always talking of doing things. Why couldn't she?" He watched the float oscillating gently towards quiescence. "Silly to begin thinking about her," he said. "Damn silly!" But once he had begun thinking about her he had to go on. "Oh blow!" cried Mr. Polly presently, and pulled up his hook to find another fish had just snatched at it in the last instant.
Accordingly, the next day the lines were got out; and the Malay interpreter, who knew a great deal more of fishing than did Harry or Abdool, took the matter in hand. The hooks were baited with pieces of meat, or shreds of white or scarlet bunting. The fish bit eagerly, and all three were kept actively employed in drawing them up, and rebaiting the hooks.
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