Higginson, having been very unlucky before this, losing several
strong lines, had provided himself this time with one which, he said,
could hold a hundred-pounder--the line consisting of two thick flaxen
lines plaited together. He had it rigged on his pole. Grown careless
from the ill-luck we had met, he at length let his bait sink to the
bottom, about thirty yards from the rocks, and got talking with the
Captain, who had given up fishing, and, with his sou'wester pulled about
his ears, was taking a comfortable pipe in a crevice of the biggest
rock.

Suddenly I heard a reel go clork--cle-erk cleerk! and saw Harry's pole
fall from his hands to the rock. He seized it in a second, but as he
stopped the revolving of the reel, the pole bent, and he pulled back on
it--Snap! It was gone in the middle of the second joint. Of course the
line remained, and that he commenced pulling in, bestowing the while
some pretty hard expressions on his bad luck, for it really seemed as if
the once-hooked fish had gone off in safety. About ten yards of the
line came in slack, and then it stopped.

"Fast to a rock! What luck!" cried Harry, and then he commenced to
jerk.

As he turned to look at us, with an expression of sarcastic
indifference, I saw the line straightening out again in a steady, slow
way, as if it was attached to an invisible canal-boat.

"Hold fast," I cried; "look! you have got something. What can it be?"
saying which, Harry commenced to pull, but in vain--the prey went ahead.

Captain Mugford had taken the pipe from his mouth as his attention was
fastened by the strange manoeuvres of Harry's game. Things having come
to such a bewildering pass, he put up his pipe and, shaking the folds of
the sou'wester from about his head, sprung forward and took hold of the
line with Harry, but it still ran out through their hands.

"Seventeen seventy-six! what a whopper," exclaimed the Captain. "We
must let go another anchor--eh, Harry?"

"Indeed! yes," replied Harry. "Look! he is stopping, and seems to be
shaking the hook as a cat would a mouse. What can it be?"

Now the unknown took a tack towards us, and the line was gathered in and
kept tight, and, as he began to go about on another course, his enemies
took advantage of his momentary sluggishness to haul with considerable
effect on the line. That brought the rascal right under the rocks. We
could not see him; only the commotion of the water. Being brought up
wi