Do we catch anything besides mackerel? If you’ll put out that line and the captain will sail along the edge of one of these “rips” you are very likely to have a practical answer to your question. Nothing that time; but the captain is coming about and we’ll see what happens on the other tack. This is the poetry of sea-fishing. Here we are bowling along with a full sheet and--hang on to him! No, you have not hooked on to a railroad train but a blue-fish. Look out! Don’t slacken on your line or you’ll lose him. Hurts your fingers? Of course it does. You should have put cots on them. Give him a swing! Keep him clear of the boat! There! There’s your answer. He’s the bravest, pluckiest, gamiest fish on the coast. We sometimes spend a half day or so fishing for bottom-fish like scup, black-fish, or even flounders, for they bite freely and bring a fair price in the market; but if you’re fishing for sport, there is just one fish in these waters which fills the bill completely, and that is the blue-fish. Sometimes you fish for hours without getting a strike, and then all at once you run into a school of them. When this happens you have your work cut out for you. I remember a day at Block Island when the Doctor and I had sailed almost entirely around the island with our lines trailing unmolested behind the boat. Just as we were approaching the starting place the captain said, “Look at the bluebills jumping, over towards shore!” The bluebill is a small fish some four or five inches long, and favourite food for the blue-fish. We tacked and sailed across the school, back and forth, again and again, and when the fray was over we had sixty blue-fish lying in the bottom of the boat that averaged over five pounds in weight. There’s the light-house; we’ll soon be in. See that hotel on the hill? I’ve just time to tell you of something that happened there on a summer morning a few years ago. I met Dr. -------- on the Providence boat and he asked where we were stopping and if we had any fishing. When I told him of the “Quickstep” and Captain Frank and the mackerel, he said, “I’ll be over Monday morning. I’m tired of Assemblies and Chautauquas and hotel piazzas.” Monday found him with us, and arrangements were made to start at five o’clock Tuesday morning. The hour came, but Dr. -------- did not. The captain worried about the tide and the bar, and I volunteered to see what had become of our tardy friend. Pounding on the hotel door I finally managed to rout out the night watchman, who readily went in quest of the Doctor. Upon his return he reported that the would-be fisherman had been asleep, but was now dressing and would be down very soon. The minutes passed, the tide was ebbing, and no Doctor. Finally I suggested to the watchman that he make another trip to see if he could not accelerate the Doctor’s motions. Reappearing after a little, the watchman said, “What do you think? That miserable old cuss had gone sound asleep again.”