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Updated: July 19, 2025
This was because the natives would carefully watch their stone sinkers descend, and use every care to keep them from being entangled in the coral, whilst my line, which had a 12 oz. leaden sinker, would plump quickly to the bottom in the midst of the hungry fish; consequently, although I lost some hooks by fouling and now and then dragged up a bunch of coral, I was catching more fish than any one else.
Pecetti selected for us some stout Virginia hooks tied on double gut, with four-ounce sinkers, the tide being quite strong here and half flood. I found the bottom alongside the boat with about twelve feet of line, and left my hooks upon it as directed. Soon I felt a slight touch, but pulled up nothing but bare hooks.
The truth was at once apparent. The obstacle which had so long blocked the shaft had at last been removed, but a deadly gas carbon dioxide had at once ascended from the long-sealed workings, and we knew that the men we had been trying to save must be beyond the reach of help. One of the sinkers who lay insensible on the platform was the son of the master-sinker, Coulson by name.
"'Cos the sick bay, and it weren't none too large, was all but filled up wi' six 'efty great casks, wi' flagstaffs and sinkers complete. They wus the buoys Number One 'ad bin talkin' abart all along." I could not help laughing. "I see," I said. "The First Lieutenant meant BUOYS and the doctor the ship's BOYS, what?" He nodded. "But tell me," I asked. "What about the bleeding?" "Bleedin', sir!
Some of them were in favour of taking the kegs that we had got ashore, but the most of us were agin that, and the captain himself had told us to sink them, so we rowed out of the cove again and tied sinkers to the kegs and lowered them down three or four hundred yards west of the mouth of the cove.
With hooks and sinkers on our own lines aft, we tossed out, grappled, captured, and broke off nine of their lines. But the next time, so slow is the movement of so large a ship, the mutineers hauled all their lines safely inboard ere they towed aft within striking distance of my grapnels. Still I improved. As long as I kept the Elsinore before the wind they could not fish. I experimented.
Condy took off his coat and made a great show of stringing the tackle: winding the lines from the spools on to the reels, and attaching the sinkers and flies to the leaders, smoking the while, and scowling fiercely.
To those who had not, the articles were ready at hand; for speculators had mingled in the crowd, one of whom affixed his "shingle" to a post between-decks, setting forth, "Fishing-Lines and Hooks, with Sinkers and Bait," the latter consisting of clams in the shell, contained in a barrel big enough for the supply of the whole flotilla of green boats and red shirts, which still hung around us like swallows in the wake of an osprey.
They 're not a bit partic'lar. Swallow the bait, hook and all, and go that 's their caper. The fellow that does n't catch the first fish has to clean 'em." Both sinkers started on their long descent together, and seventy feet of line whizzed out before they came to rest. But at the instant his sinker touched the bottom Joe felt the struggling jerks of a hooked fish.
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