ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

“Oh keep your mouth off him, please,” David said. “Don’t put your mouth on him.”

“I won’t,” Andrew said. “I’ve been doing nothing but pray ever since you hooked him.”

“Do you think his mouth will hold?” young Tom whispered to his father, who was holding the wheel and looking down into the stern and watching the slant of the white line in the dark water.

“I hope so. Dave isn’t strong enough to be rough with him.”

“I’ll do anything if we can get him,” young Tom said. “Anything. I’ll give up anything. I’ll promise anything. Get him some water, Andy.”

“I’ve got some,” Eddy said. “Stay with him, old Dave boy.”

“I don’t want him any closer,” Roger called up. He was a great fisherman and he and Thomas Hudson understood each other perfectly in a boat.

“I’ll put him astern,” Thomas Hudson called and swung the boat around very softly and easily so the stern hardly disturbed the calm sea.

The fish was sounding now and Thomas Hudson backed the boat very slowly to ease the pressure on the line all that he could. But with only a touch of reverse with the stern moving slowly toward the fish the angle was all gone from the line and the rod tip was pointing straight down and the line kept going out in a series of steady jerks, the rod bucking each time in David’s hands. Thomas Hudson slipped the boat ahead just a thought so that the boy would not have the line so straight up and down in the water. He knew how it was pulling on his back in that position, but he had to save all the line he could.

“I can’t put any more drag on or it will break,” David said. “What will he do, Mr. Davis?”

“He’ll just keep on going down until you stop him,” Roger said. “Or until he stops. Then you’ve got to try to get him up.”

The line kept going out and down, out and down, out and down. The rod was bent so far it looked as though it must break and the line was taut as a tuned cello string and there was not much more of it on the reel.

“What can I do, papa?”

“Nothing. You’re doing what there is to do.”

“Won’t he hit the bottom?” Andrew asked.

“There isn’t any bottom,” Roger told him.

“You hold him, Davy,” Eddy said. “He’ll get sick of it and come up.”

“These damned straps are killing me,” David said. “They cut my shoulders off.”

“Do you want me to take him?” Andrew asked. “No, you fool,” David said. “I just said what they were doing to me. I don’t care about it.”

“See if you can rig him the kidney harness,” Thomas Hudson called down to Eddy. “You can tie it on with line if the straps are too long.”

Eddy wrapped the broad, quilted pad across the small of the boy’s back and fastened the rings on the web straps that ran across it to the reel with heavy line.

“That’s much better,” David said. “Thank you very much, Eddy.”

“Now you can hold him with your back as well as your shoulders,” Eddy told him.

“But there isn’t going to be any line.” David said. “Oh Goddam him, why does he have to keep on sounding?”

“Tom,” Eddy called up. “Ease her a little northwest. I think he’s moving.”

Thomas Hudson turned the wheel and moved her softly, slowly, softly out to sea. There was a big patch of yellow gulf weed ahead with a bird on it and the water was calm and so blue and clear that, as you looked down into it, there were lights in it like the reflections from a prism.

“You see?” Eddy told David. “You’re not losing any now.”

The boy could not raise the rod; but the line was no longer jerking down into the water. It was as taut as ever and there weren’t fifty yards left on the reel. But it was not going out. David was holding him and the boat was on his course. Thomas Hudson could see the just perceptible slant of the white line deep down in the blue water as the boat barely moved, its engines turning so quietly he could not hear them.

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