“He’s sounding again,” Roger said. “Watch yourself, Davy. Can you see the line OK, Tom?”
“I can see it OK,” Thomas Hudson told him. It was not yet at a very steep slant and he could see it a long way down in the water from the top of the house.
“He may want to go down to die,” Thomas Hudson told his oldest boy, speaking very low. “That would ruin Dave.”
Young Tom shook his head and bit his lips.
“Hold him all you can, Dave,” Thomas Hudson heard Roger say. “Tighten up on him and give it all it will take.”
The boy tightened up the drag almost to the breaking point of the rod and line and then hung on, bracing himself to take the punishment the best he could, while the line went out and out and down and down.
“When you stop him this time I think you will have whipped him,” Roger told David. “Throw her out, Tom.”
“She’s cut,” Thomas Hudson said. “But I think I could save a little backing.”
“OK. Try it.”
“Backing now,” Thomas Hudson said. They saved a little line by backing but not much, and the line was getting terribly straight up and down. There was less on the reel now than at the worst time before.
“You’ll have to get out on the stern, Davy,” Roger said. “You’ll have to loosen the drag up a little to get the butt out.”
David loosened the drag.
“Now get the butt into your butt rest. You hold him around the waist, Eddy.”
“Oh God, papa,” young Tom said. “He’s taking it all right to the bottom now.”
David was on his knees on the low stern now, the rod bent so that its tip was underwater, its butt in the leather socket of the butt rest that was strapped around his waist. Andrew was holding onto David’s feet and Roger knelt beside him watching the line in the water and the little there was on the reel. He shook his head at Thomas Hudson.
There was not twenty yards more on the reel and David was pulled down with half the rod underwater now. Then there was barely fifteen yards on the reel. Now there was not ten yards. Then the line stopped going out. The boy was still bent far over the stern and most of the rod was in the water. But no line was going out.
“Get him back into the chair, Eddy. Easy. Easy,” Roger said. “When you can, I mean. He’s stopped him.”
Eddy helped David back into the fighting chair, holding him around the waist so that a sudden lurch by the fish would not pull the boy overboard. Eddy eased him into the chair and David got the rod butt into the gimbel socket and braced with his feet and pulled back on the rod. The fish lifted a little.
“Only pull when you are going to get some line,” Roger told David. “Let him pull the rest of the time. Try and rest inside the action except when you are working on him.”
“You’ve got him, Davy,” Eddy said. “You’re getting it on him all the time. Just take it slow and easy and you’ll kill him.
Thomas Hudson eased the boat a little forward to put the fish further astern. There was good shadow now over all the stern. The boat was working steadily further out to sea and no wind troubled the surface.
“Papa,” young Tom said to his father. “I was looking at his feet when I made the drinks. They’re bleeding.”
“He’s chafed them pulling against the wood.”
“Do you think I could put a pillow there? A cushion for him to pull against?”
“Go down and ask Eddy,” Thomas Hudson said. “But don’t interrupt Dave.”
It was well into the fourth hour of the fight now. The boat was still working out to sea and David, with Roger holding the back of his chair now, was raising the fish steadily. David looked stronger now than he had an hour before but Thomas Hudson could see where his heels showed the blood that had run down from the soles of his feet. It looked varnished in the sun.