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He waved greeting, but his gaze only for that one recognizing instant left the salmon that were landing flop, flop on the Blackbird's deck out of a troller's fish well. He made out a slip, handed the troller some currency. There was a brief exchange of words between them. The man nodded, pushed off his boat. Instantly another edged into the vacant place.
She stopped in breathless excitement. Then she jerked again. "Oh, dear me!" she cried anxiously, "there's something on." "Pull it in," I shouted, "steady, not too quickly." Immediately thereafter, a fine, two-pound trout lay flopping in the bottom of the boat. "Just think of that," cried my fair troller, "my first fish! And all by moving up a foolish little hook an inch or so."
Part of the old guard stuck tight to MacRae. But there were new men fishing; there were Japanese and illiterate Greeks. It was not to be expected that these men should indulge in far-sighted calculations. But it was a trifle disappointing to see how readily any troller would unload his catch into a mustard pot if neither of MacRae's carriers happened to be at hand.
Vin checked his tabs with the count of fish. The other men slushed decks clean with buckets of sea water. "Twenty-seven hundred," MacRae said. "Big morning. Every troller in the Gulf must be here." "No, I have to go to Folly Bay and Siwash Islands to-night," Vin told him. "There's about twenty boats working there and at Jenkins Pass. Salmon everywhere."
"What would you make of that address, now?" said Mr Bright, presenting a letter to Miss Lillycrop for inspection. "It looks like Cop Cup no it begins with a C at all events. What think you of it, May?" said the puzzled lady. "It seems to me something like Captain Troller of Rittler Bunch," said May, laughing. "It is quite illegible." "Not quite," said one of the blind officers, with a smile.
There were squalls that blew up out of nowhere and drove them all to cover. There were days when a dead swell rolled and the trolling boats dipped and swung and pointed their bluff bows skyward as they climbed the green mountains, for the salmon strike when a sea is on, and a troller runs from heavy weather only when he can no longer handle his gear.
"He knows every pot-hole where a troller can lie. He's not afraid of wind or sea or work. No wonder he gets the fish. Those damned " Gower cut his soliloquy off in the middle to watch the Blackbird slide out of sight behind a point. He knew all about Jack MacRae's operations, the wide swath he was cutting in the matter of blueback salmon. The Folly Bay showing to date was a pointed reminder.
The foul ground and the tidal currents that swept by the Rock held no danger to the gear of a rowboat troller. He fished a single short line with a pound or so of lead. He could stop dead in a boat length if his line fouled. So he pursued the salmon as the salmon pursued the little fish among the kelp and boulders.
He was paying forty cents a fish, more than any troller in the Gulf of Georgia had ever got for June bluebacks, more than any buyer had ever paid before the opening of the canneries heightened the demand. He was clearing nearly a thousand dollars a week for himself, and he was putting unheard-of sums in the pockets of the fishermen.
He was a lusty troller of ale-songs; and, with his mug in his hand, would lean his waddling bulk partly out of the sentry-box, singing: "No frost, no snow, no wind, I trow, Can hurt me if I wold, I am so wrapt, and thoroughly lapt In jolly good ale and old, I stuff my skin so full within, Of jolly good ale and old." Or this,
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