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Practically submerged, and offering the gale no surface to get hold of, it moved much more slowly than the high-sided boat, and so retarded its course. Jim came crawling aft again. "Guess that'll hold her!" he exclaimed. "I've strengthened the lanyard with some ground-line, and it ought to last us through the night. We'll be as snug as if we were in Sprowl's Cove, hey, Perce?"
Her glance swept the interior of the store with its strange conglomeration of goods for sale on the shelves the rows of glowingly labeled canned goods, the blue papers of macaroni, the little green cartons of fishhooks; the clothing hanging in groves, the rows and rows of red mittens; tiers of kegs of red lead, barrels of flour, boxes of hardtack; hanks of tarred ground-line, coils of several sizes of cordage, with a small kedge anchor here and there.
"That won't do," said Spurling. Producing a coil of line, he took three or four turns round Percy's waist, and lashed him fast to the bails. He did the same for himself. "Guess we'll stick on now," he remarked. "Where did you get that rope?" asked Percy. "It's all that's left of the ground-line. Thought it might come in handy, so I jammed it inside my oil-coat before I jumped.
Jim spoke first: "Close as they make 'em! I'm glad that's over!" Percy agreed with all his heart. Jim had discovered that the tub was becoming a bit shaky, so he reinforced the lanyard, and strengthened the bottom by binding it with ground-line. Before long it was towing again in front of the bow, as good as new. Hours passed, but the intensity of the gale did not slacken.
A woman stepped forward, and would have spoken, but there was a quick assenting murmur from the men, who realised that De Forest was trying to pull the situation down to ground-line. 'Yes! Yes! they cried. 'We cut out because they made crowds and invaded privacy! Stick to that! Keep on that switch! Lift the Serviles out of this! The Board's in charge! Hsh!
This building may have measured forty feet in length by twenty in depth, and seventeen from the ground-line to the wall-plate. Also it had a doorway of remarkable height and two window-places, but all these openings were unclosed, except by curtains of hide which hung before them. Leonard called Soa and asked her what the place was.
Presently, sweeping the ground-line with the glass, I noticed, crossing an open place, about a mile away, the figure of a swagman approaching from the west that is, coming up the river. I kept the glass in his direction, and whenever he disappeared I was on the watch, and caught him again as he came in sight, tramping wearily along in the roasting sun.
Emptying out the ground-line from one of the tubs, he took a small herring in his left hand, and with his right grasped the shank of the hook on the first ganging; he forced the sharp point into the fish until the barb had gone clean through and the herring was impaled firmly. Then he dropped the hook into the empty tub, giving the ganging a deft swing, so that it fell in a smooth coil.
Each tub holds about five hundred fathoms of ground-line, with a thirty-eight-inch ganging, or short line with a hook on its end, tied every five feet; so there're between five hundred and six hundred hooks to every tub. One man alone can bait and handle four tubs of trawl. Two of us are going to fish together, so we ought to be able to swing six tubs without any trouble."
Some time he'll do it once too often. Well, as the saying goes, 'When rum's in, wit's out! How's lobsters?" At two o'clock on a Friday morning toward the end of August Spurling and Whittington started with six tubs of trawl, baited with salted herring, for Clay Bank. Long before sunrise the last fathom of ground-line had gone overboard and the tubs were empty.
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