at a
lovely morning, and how the blue ocean glinted and sparkled in the quick
warming sun. Away to the southward the high, thickly-timbered coast was
broken up by jutting headlands and little, irregularly shaped bays, with
steep, rocky shores; and northward a long sweep of beach trended in a
curving line for ten miles, till it ended at the purple sides of Point
Plomer, beyond which loomed the misty blue outline of Captain Cook's
'Smoaky' Cape.

The wind was from the westward; so we hoisted our lug sail, and headed
seaward to the sun. Behind us the noisy Hastings River bar clamoured and
moaned unceasingly; for though the sea was smooth, the tide was on the
ebb, and rushing fiercely out over the wide but shallow entrance to
the river, and short, angry waves reared, and tumbled, and fought the
roaring current. But in another ten minutes the noise of the waters
became lost in the distance, and we heard, naught but the gentle
_lip-lap, lip-lap_, of the boat's cut-water as she slipped over the
swelling seas. Three miles out we took our bearings from a mountain
called The Brothers, and Camden Haven Heads, and then dropped our anchor
in twenty-two fathoms on a rocky bottom.

There is not much 'finnicking' preparation for schnapper fishing, and
in five minutes every line was baited, and over the side, and at the
bottom, and before another two or three had passed we knew we had struck
the right spot, for nearly every one of us felt the unmistakable tug
of a lusty schnapper, and then the determined downward pull, strong and
steady, which he makes when once hooked. Slaney, who was using a line as
thick as signal-halliards, was the first to haul his fish over the side,
and drop him, kicking and thrashing like a young porpoise, into the
boat; the rest of us, whose tackle was much thinner, were a long way
behind him, and Slaney's line was over the side again before our fish
were laid beside the first arrival. What a beautiful fish is a ten-pound
schnapper--a brilliant pink back, sides and tail, dotted over with
tiny spots of a wonderful, gleaming blue that sparkle like miniature
diamonds; the bream-shaped head a deep reddish-purple, with nose and
lips of palish pink; the belly a pure, shining white. No wonder that
Phillip, the first Governor of New South Wales, spoke of the schnapper
as 'an exceedingly beautiful and palatable fish.'

For about an hour we continued to haul up fish after fish till our
arms ached. The smallest weighed