The baiting accomplished, with a great flourish you throw your sinker, and see it bury itself in the muddy water; then you listen intently, for the least suggestion of a disturbance down there at the other end of the line; the sinker thumps upon this rock and the next one, drops into a hole and gets caught for a moment, but is loosened again, and then a sort of galvanic shock thrills through your body; on guard! if you would save your bait; another twinge, fainter than the first, and at last a regular tug, and you haul in your line, which is jerking incessantly by this time. The next moment the hooks come to the surface, and on one of them you find a Lilliputian fish that is not yet old enough to feed himself, and was probably caught by accident. Perhaps you haul in your line as fast as you can, bait it and throw it in again as rapidly as convenient--for this is the sport that fishermen love to boast of; perhaps you rock in your boat all day, and draw but a half-dozen of these shiners out before their time, and waste your precious worms to no purpose. It's hungry work, isn't it? and the summons to dinner that is by-and-by sounded from the yacht is a pleasing excuse for deserting so profitless a task. The right thing to do, however, is to put on an appearance of immense success whenever a rival skiff comes within hail. You hold up your largest fish several times in succession, so as to delude the anxious inquirers in the other boat, who will of course think you have a dozen of those big cod with a striking family resemblance. It is a very successful ruse; all fishermen indulge in it, and you have as good a right to play the pantomime as they. By-and-by we are glad to think of a return to town. Why is it that pleasure excursions seem to ravel out? They never stop short after a brilliant achievement nor conclude with an imposing tableau; they die out gradually. Someone gets out here, some-one else falls off there, and there is a general running down of the machinery that has propelled the festival up to the last moment. They flatten unmistakably, and it is almost a pity that some sort of climax cannot be engaged for each occasion, in the midst of which everyone should disappear, in red fire and a blaze of rockets.