even from the boys, who clambered around to the tiny cape that
sheltered the basin into which the motor boat had been run, and from
the point of which they expected to cast for bass.

"Now, Miss," said the boatkeeper, "down at the bottom of this still
pool Mr. Tautog is feeding on the rocks. Drop your baited hook down
gently to him. And if he nibbles, pull sharply at first, and then, with
a stead, hand-over-hand motion, draw him in."

Ruth was quite excited; but once she saw Nita and the man, Crab, walking
farther along the rocks, and Ruth wondered that the fellow was so
attentive to the runaway. But this was merely a passing thought. Her
mind returned to the line she watched.

She pulled it up after a long while; the hook was bare. Either Mr. Tautog
had been very, very careful when he nibbled the bait, or the said bait
had slipped off. It was not easy to make the jelly-like body of the
scallop remain on the hook. But Ruth was as anxious to catch a fish
as the other girls, and she had watched Phineas with sharp and eager
eyes when he baited the hook.

Ruth dropped it over the edge of the rock again after a minute. It sank
down, down, down----Was that a nibble? She felt the faintest sort of a
jerk on the line. Surely something was at the bait!

Again the jerk. Ruth returned the compliment by giving the line a prompt
tug. Instantly she knew that she had hooked him!

"Oh! _oh!_ OH!" she gasped, in a rising scale of delight and excitement.

She pulled in on the line. The fish was heavy, and he tried to pull
his way, too. The blackfish is not much of a fighter, but he can sag
back and do his obstinate best to remain in the water when the fisher
is determined to get him out.

This fellow weighed two pounds and a half and was well hooked. Ruth, her
cheeks glowing, her eyes dancing, hauled in, and in, and in----There
he came out of the water, a plump, glistening body, that flapped and
floundered in the air, and on the ledge at her feet. She desired mightily
to cry out; but Phineas had warned them all to be still while they
fished. Their voices might scare all the fish away.

She unhooked it beautifully, seizing it firmly in the gills. Phineas had
shown her where to lay any she might catch in a little cradle in the rock
behind her. It was a damp little hollow, and Mr. Tautog could not flop
out into the sea again.

Oh! it was fun to bait the hook once more with trembling fingers, and
heave the weighted line over the ed