“It looks like a wonderful day, papa,” Tom said. “It looks like a good stream.”
“It’s a fine stream. Look at the little curl of the whirlpools along the edge.”
“Isn’t this the same water that we have in on the beach in front of the house?”
“Sometimes, Tommy. Now the tide is out and it has pushed the Stream out from in front of the mouth of the harbor. See in there along the beach, where there is no opening, it’s made in again.”
“It looks almost as blue in there as it is out here. What makes the Gulf water so blue?”
“It’s a different density of water. It’s an altogether different type of water.”
“The depth makes it darker, though.”
“Only when you look down into it. Sometimes the plankton in it make it almost purple.”
“Why?”
“Because they add red to the blue I think. I know they call the Red Sea red because the plankton make it look really red. They have terrific concentrations of them there.”
“Did you like the Red Sea, papa?”
“I loved it. It was awfully hot but you never saw such wonderful reefs and it’s full of fish on the two monsoons. You’d like it, Tom.”
“I read two books about it in French by Mr. de Montfried. They were very good. He was in the slave trade. Not the white slave trade. The olden days slave trade. He’s a friend of Mr. Davis.”
“I know,” Thomas Hudson said. “I know him, too.”
“Mr. Davis told me that Mr. de Montfried came back to Paris one time from the slave trade and when he would take a lady out anywhere he would have the taxi driver put down the top of the taxi and he would steer the taxi driver wherever he wanted to go by the stars. Say Mr. de Montfried was on the Pont de la Concorde and he wanted to go to the Madeleine. He wouldn’t just tell the taxi driver to take him to the Madeleine, or to cross the Place de la Concorde and go up the Rue Royale the way you or I would do it, papa. Mr. de Montfried would steer himself to the Madeleine by the North Star.”
“I never heard that one about Mr. de Montfried,” Thomas Hudson said. “I heard quite a lot of others.”
“It’s quite a complicated way to get around in Paris, don’t you think? Mr. Davis wanted to go into the slave trade at one time with Mr. de Montfried but there was some sort of a hitch. I don’t remember what it was. Yes, now I do. Mr. de Montfried had left the slave trade and gone into the opium trade. That was it.”
“Didn’t Mr. Davis want to go into the opium trade?”
“No. I remember he said he thought he’d leave the opium trade to Mr. De Quincey and Mr. Cocteau. He said they’d done so well in it that he didn’t think it was right to disturb them. That was one of those remarks that I couldn’t understand. Papa, you explain anything to me that I ask but it used to slow the conversation up so much to be asking all the time that I would just remember certain things I didn’t understand to ask about sometime and that’s one of those things.”
“You must have quite a backlog of those things.”
“I’ve got hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. But I get rid of a lot of them every year by getting to understand them myself. But some I know I’ll have to ask you about. At school this year I may write a list of them for an English composition. I’ve got some awfully good ones for a composition of that sort.”
“Do you like school, Tom?”
“It’s just one of those things you have to take. I don’t think anyone likes school, do they, that has ever done anything else?”
“I don’t know. I hated it.”
“Didn’t you like art school either?”
“No. I liked to learn to draw but I didn’t like the school part.”
“I don’t really mind it,” Tom said. “But after you’ve spent your life with men like Mr. Joyce and Mr. Pascin and you and Mr. Davis, being with boys seems sort of juvenile.”
“You have fun, though, don’t you?”
“Oh yes. I have lots of friends and I like any of the sports that aren’t built around throwing or catching balls and I study quite hard. But papa, it isn’t much of a life.”
“That was the way I always felt about it,” Thomas Hudson said. “You liven it up as much as you can, though.”
“I do. I liven it up all I can and still stay in it. Sometimes it’s a pretty close thing, though.”
Thomas Hudson looked astern where the wake ran crisply in the calm sea and the two baits from the outriggers were dragging; dipping and leaping in the curl of the waves the wake raised as it cut the calm. David and Andrew sat in the two fishing chairs holding rods. Thomas Hudson saw their backs. Their faces were astern watching the baits. He looked ahead at some bonito jumping, not working and threshing the water, but coming up out and dropping back into the water singly and in pairs, making hardly any disturbance of the surface as they rose, shining in the sun, and returning, heavy heads down, to enter the water almost without splash.
“Fish!” Thomas Hudson heard young Tom shout. “Fish! Fish! There he comes up. Behind you, Dave. Watch him!”
Thomas Hudson saw a huge boil in the water but could not see the fish. David had the rod butt in the gimble and was looking up at the clothespin on the outrigger line. Thomas Hudson saw the line fall from the outrigger in a long, slow loop that tightened as it hit the water and now was racing out at a slant, slicing the water as it went.
“Hit him, Dave. Hit him hard,” Eddy called from the companionway.
“Hit him, Dave. For God’s sake hit him,” Andrew begged.
“Shut up,” David said. “I’m handling him.” He hadn’t struck yet and the line was steadily going out at that angle, the rod bowed, the boy holding back on it as the line moved out. Thomas Hudson had throttled the motors down so they were barely turning over.
“Oh for God’s sake, hit him,” Andrew pleaded. “Or let me hit him.”
David just held back on the rod and watched the line moving out at the same steady angle. He had loosened the drag.
“He’s a broadbill, papa,” he said without looking up. “I saw his sword when he took it.”
“Honest to God?” Andrew asked. “Oh boy.”
“I think you ought to hit him now,” Roger was standing with the boy now. He had the back out of the chair and he was buckling the harness on the reel. “Hit him now, Dave, and really hit him.”
“Do you think he’s had it long enough?” David asked. “You don’t think he’s just carrying it in his mouth and swimming with it?”
“I think you better hit him before he spits it out.”
David braced his feet, tightened the drag well down with his right hand, and struck back hard against the great weight. He struck again and again bending the rod like a bow. The line moved out steadily. He had made no impression on the fish.
“Hit him again, Dave,” Roger said. “Really put it into him.”
David struck again with all his strength and the line started zizzing out, the rod bent so that he could hardly hold it.
“Oh God,” he said devoutly. “I think I’ve got it into him.”
“Ease up on your drag,” Roger told him. “Turn with him, Tom, and watch the line.”
“Turn with him and watch the line,” Thomas Hudson repeated. “You all right, Dave?”
“I’m wonderful, papa,” Dave said. “Oh God, if I can catch this fish.”
Thomas Hudson swung the boat around almost on her stern. Dave’s line was fading off the reel and Thomas Hudson moved up on the fish.
“Tighten up and get that line in now,” Roger said. “Work on him, Dave.”
David was lifting and reeling as he lowered, lifting and reeling as he lowered, as regularly as a machine, and was getting back a good quantity of line onto his reel.
“Nobody in our family’s ever caught a broadbill,” Andrew said.
“Oh keep your mouth off him, please,” David said. “Don’t put your mouth on him.”
“I won’t,” Andrew said. “I’ve been doing nothing but pray ever since you hooked him.”
“Do you think his mouth will hold?” young Tom whispered to his father, who was holding the wheel and looking down into the stern and watching the slant of the white line in the dark water.
“I hope so. Dave isn’t strong enough to be rough with him.”
“I’ll do anything if we can get him,” young Tom said. “Anything. I’ll give up anything. I’ll promise anything. Get him some water, Andy.”
“I’ve got some,” Eddy said. “Stay with him, old Dave boy.”
“I don’t want him any closer,” Roger called up. He was a great fisherman and he and Thomas Hudson understood each other perfectly in a boat.
“I’ll put him astern,” Thomas Hudson called and swung the boat around very softly and easily so the stern hardly disturbed the calm sea.
The fish was sounding now and Thomas Hudson backed the boat very slowly to ease the pressure on the line all that he could. But with only a touch of reverse with the stern moving slowly toward the fish the angle was all gone from the line and the rod tip was pointing straight down and the line kept going out in a series of steady jerks, the rod bucking
