“You have fun, though, don’t you?”
“Oh yes. I have lots of friends and I like any of the sports that aren’t built around throwing or catching balls and I study quite hard. But papa, it isn’t much of a life.”
“That was the way I always felt about it,” Thomas Hudson said. “You liven it up as much as you can, though.”
“I do. I liven it up all I can and still stay in it. Sometimes it’s a pretty close thing, though.”
Thomas Hudson looked astern where the wake ran crisply in the calm sea and the two baits from the outriggers were dragging; dipping and leaping in the curl of the waves the wake raised as it cut the calm. David and Andrew sat in the two fishing chairs holding rods. Thomas Hudson saw their backs. Their faces were astern watching the baits. He looked ahead at some bonito jumping, not working and threshing the water, but coming up out and dropping back into the water singly and in pairs, making hardly any disturbance of the surface as they rose, shining in the sun, and returning, heavy heads down, to enter the water almost without splash.
“Fish!” Thomas Hudson heard young Tom shout. “Fish! Fish! There he comes up. Behind you, Dave. Watch him!”
Thomas Hudson saw a huge boil in the water but could not see the fish. David had the rod butt in the gimble and was looking up at the clothespin on the outrigger line. Thomas Hudson saw the line fall from the outrigger in a long, slow loop that tightened as it hit the water and now was racing out at a slant, slicing the water as it went.
“Hit him, Dave. Hit him hard,” Eddy called from the companionway.
“Hit him, Dave. For God’s sake hit him,” Andrew begged.
“Shut up,” David said. “I’m handling him.” He hadn’t struck yet and the line was steadily going out at that angle, the rod bowed, the boy holding back on it as the line moved out. Thomas Hudson had throttled the motors down so they were barely turning over.
“Oh for God’s sake, hit him,” Andrew pleaded. “Or let me hit him.”
David just held back on the rod and watched the line moving out at the same steady angle. He had loosened the drag.
“He’s a broadbill, papa,” he said without looking up. “I saw his sword when he took it.”
“Honest to God?” Andrew asked. “Oh boy.”
“I think you ought to hit him now,” Roger was standing with the boy now. He had the back out of the chair and he was buckling the harness on the reel. “Hit him now, Dave, and really hit him.”
“Do you think he’s had it long enough?” David asked. “You don’t think he’s just carrying it in his mouth and swimming with it?”
“I think you better hit him before he spits it out.”
David braced his feet, tightened the drag well down with his right hand, and struck back hard against the great weight. He struck again and again bending the rod like a bow. The line moved out steadily. He had made no impression on the fish.
“Hit him again, Dave,” Roger said. “Really put it into him.”
David struck again with all his strength and the line started zizzing out, the rod bent so that he could hardly hold it.
“Oh God,” he said devoutly. “I think I’ve got it into him.”
“Ease up on your drag,” Roger told him. “Turn with him, Tom, and watch the line.”
“Turn with him and watch the line,” Thomas Hudson repeated. “You all right, Dave?”
“I’m wonderful, papa,” Dave said. “Oh God, if I can catch this fish.”
Thomas Hudson swung the boat around almost on her stern. Dave’s line was fading off the reel and Thomas Hudson moved up on the fish.
“Tighten up and get that line in now,” Roger said. “Work on him, Dave.”
David was lifting and reeling as he lowered, lifting and reeling as he lowered, as regularly as a machine, and was getting back a good quantity of line onto his reel.
“Nobody in our family’s ever caught a broadbill,” Andrew said.