“Hulloa, there! Hulloa, I say! There’s a school of mackerel breaking off the point. Wake up, every lazy lubber aboard!” “Say, Art, you’re a mean scoundrel,” said George Warren, emerging once more from the blankets. “You know there isn’t a mackerel in sight. I’ll be just fool enough to look out of the window, though, so you can laugh, so get ready.” And George looked sleepily out of the little cabin window. He had no sooner done so, however, than he sprang up, exclaiming, excitedly: “There they are, sure enough. Boys, get up! Get up! There’s a school of mackerel breaking off the point, as sure as we’re alive.” The boys needed no further urging. They dressed and scrambled out on deck. Not far away from the sloop could be seen plainly that tiny chop-sea which is caused by the breaking of a school of mackerel. The calm surface of the water was broken there by a series of miniature ripples which could not be mistaken. The fish were there, but would they bite? “They are coming this way,” said Arthur. “We can soon reach them with the throw-bait. We shall not have to leave the sloop.” Hastily they got the bait out. It was a bucket filled with scraps of fish and clams, chopped fine and mixed with salt water. Taking a long-handled dipper, Arthur half-filled it with the bait and threw it as far as he could out toward the school of fish. The mackerel seized upon it greedily. From the sloop the boys could see them dart through the water after it as it slowly sank. The water was fairly alive with fish, ravenously hungry. “Hurrah!” cried Arthur. “They’re hungry as sharks. Get the lines out, quick.” In a twinkling every boy had a line overboard; but, to their disappointment, not a fish would bite. They still seized the throw-bait that was cast out, but not one of them would take a baited hook. “If that isn’t a regular mackerel trick, I’ll eat my bait,” said George Warren. “Cap’n Sam said mackerel would often act that way, though I never saw them when they wouldn’t bite before. He says they will play around a boat for hours and not touch a hook, and, all of a sudden, they’ll commence and bite as though they were starving.” The boy’s words were unexpectedly verified at this moment by a sudden twitch at his line and by corresponding twitches at all the other lines. The fish had begun biting in earnest. The next moment the boys had three or four aboard, handsome fellows, striped green and black, changing to a bluish shade, and soon the cockpit seemed alive with them. It was new sport for Tom and Bob, but they soon learned to tend two lines, one in each hand; to drop one and haul the other in at a bite, and to slat the mackerel off the hook with a quick snap, instead of stopping to take them off by hand.