The Maid of SkerBlackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
General
The Maid of Sker
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
Foundlings -- Fiction; Romance fiction; Wales -- Fiction
So after consuming my bread and maybird, and having a good drink from
the spring, I happened to look at my great flag-basket, now ready to
burst with congers and lobsters and mullet, and spider-crabs for Bunny
(who could manage any quantity), also with other good saleable fish; and
I could not help saying to myself, "Come, after all now, Davy Llewellyn,
you are not gone so far as to want a low Scotchman to show you the place
where the fish live." And with that I lit a pipe.
What with the hard work, and the heat, and the gentle plash of wavelets,
and the calmness of the sunset, and the power of red onions, what did I
do but fall asleep as snugly as if I had been on watch in one of his
Majesty's ships of the line after a heavy gale of wind? And when I woke
up again, behold, the shadows of the rocks were over me, and the sea was
saluting the calves of my legs, which up to that mark were naked; and
but for my instinct in putting my basket up on a rock behind me, all my
noble catch of fish must have gone to the locker of Davy Jones.
At this my conscience smote me hard, as if I were getting old too soon;
and with one or two of the short strong words which I had learned in the
navy, where the chaplain himself stirred us up with them, up I roused
and rigged my pole for a good bout at the bass. At the butt of the ash
was a bar of square oak, figged in with a screw-bolt, and roven round
this was my line of good hemp, twisted evenly, so that if any fish came
who could master me, and pull me off the rocks almost, I could indulge
him with some slack by unreeving a fathom of line. At the end of the
pole was a strong loop-knot, through which ran the line, bearing two
large hooks, with the eyes of their shanks lashed tightly with cobbler's
ends upon whipcord. The points of the hooks were fetched up with a file,
and the barbs well backened, and the whole dressed over with whale-oil.
Then upon one hook I fixed a soft crab, and on the other a cuttle-fish.
There were lug-worms also in my pot, but they would do better after
dark, when a tumbling cod might be on the feed.
Good-luck and bad-luck has been my lot ever since I can remember;
sometimes a long spell of one, wing and wing, as you might say, and then
a long leg of the other. But never in all my born days did I have such a
spell of luck in the fishing way as on that blessed 10th of July 1782.
What to do with it all now became a puzzle, for I could not carry it
home all at once; and as to leaving a bit behind, or refusing to catch a
single fish that wanted to be caught, neither of these was a possible
thing to a true-born fisherman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account