The fishermen buy dingy hake from sleepy Sam Scoville in the haze of early morning. They pick up Uncle Cephus at the “Mary Louise,” where the old captain has heard the news in his bones and knows the horse mackerel, as he always calls the tuna, have arrived without hearing a word from any soul along the coast. Cephus has been waiting on his deck since the second cockcrow for the family to come by. He lowers himself into the boat as lightly as a boy of ten. And now the family can go hopefully, for in Cephus they have the best tuna man on the whole coast.
The men and boys cut up the small dinghies and make the hash they call “chum,” as the lobster boat rides the smooth and oily swells of August. It is going to be a lovely calm day. It is so still they can hear the wash of the swells two miles behind them on the coast ledges. They bear out south-by-east till the land behind them is only a low azure cloud on the horizon. A hundred boats are joining them from three directions. Everybody knows the news. Men are standing tall in the pulpits at the boats' bows with long harpoons in their hands. The waives have the “look.” The family boat slows to a crawl.
Suddenly a bronze lobsterman to star-board lets go his iron in a long arc, paying out his line to it as it whizzes after the iron. A white commotion in the sea, and the harpoon dips under. A strike! Uncle Cephus, quiet in his best trousers, tries his harpoon's point on his palm, and a gleam comes into his eye. Father nods his head, and the boys throw over the “chum.” The white snowflakes of cut-up fish twinkle and zigzag down into the dark water. Peter on the port side puts over his line with a hake on the hook hung by the backbone. Father on the starboard does the same. Uncle Timothy at the stern. Everyone is very quiet. A fisherman two boats away is all at once commotion. Suddenly, by some unseen power, he starts off fast over the sen.
Peter gets the first bite. A little trem-or down deep below, then his arms are nearly wrenched from the sockets, he starts paying out his line hand Over fish. But it brings up slack, and his face falls. A gone goose! But father suddenly stiffens at his hack and yanks a yank, and then his line sings away wicked through his hands so fast it smokes. Father lets it run till the spool is almost bare. Now he starts slowing the line down, gingerly and gradually. He begins drawing it back, coil by coil. Out it sings suddenly again, and out he lets it go. But back again he gentles it. All the way this time. Under the boat's side a bluish torpedo looms, with staring eyes and fins like blue sickles. Uncle Cephus grows taut. His iron arm slowly rises. His blue eyes grow bluer. Peter's eyes are half out of his head.
“Turn him to port a bit, William, so I can go in back of his gills,”
Father gently swings the torpedo a dight sidewise. Big Uncle Cephus turns into a bolt of blue lightning, His arm goes down too quick to follow. The whole Atlantic churns around the boat and turns crimson. Away go line, harpoon, and all. Father pays out the two hundred feet of rope like quicksilver, keeping it from taking a turn around any boy's leg or arm and dragging him to limbo. He ups the keg, and over that goes, its tall staff staggering as the keg goes to sea, clucks, and disappears.
“He'll go six hundred, bet my soul,” is all Father says.
“Joy go with him!” says Cephus. He'll go six hundred and fifty, bet you mine. And he won't stray too far. I put it right under Little Rodney's backbone, and it will stay put till he gets barnacles on his belly.”
The family gonfalon conies up at last far out on the horizon. 'The menfolks pay no attention to it at all. They are busy with another torpedo. Peter hooks this one, but be hands his line over to Father when it begins to get hot. Father maneuvers the fish to the boat's side, and Uncle Cephus puts the family trademark into him deep with his second harpoon. This fellow is not so big as the other. He is a little fellow, hardly five hundred pounds! He doesn't take all the line over when he makes his run. They get him to the sidle again. Uncle Cephus gives him another iron, and the water reddens all about the boat.
“You hurt him bad,” says Father.
“Shouldn't wonder,” says Cephus, and his mustache quivers.
They rig the rackle-and-fall and swing it out Over the waves. The vast blue-green head breaks the surface, running with bronze lights. Uncle Cephus leans over and threads a wire cable in the fish's gaping mouth and out through his gills behind. The silver and bronze and blue giant waggles his headside to side, tired. He doesn't like this business at all, and he says so with his head. They make the cable fast to the tackle block. Father pulls, and Uncle Cephus puts his great weight into it. The fish gives a last flop. All hands help at the fall. The wire cuts his gills like a knife, and the lust red life pours into the sea. The torpedo mounts skyward with triangles of pure, solid but chin, gold along his back. The fish swings in. He is bigger than Uncle Cephus, but Uncle Cephus takes him in his arms and eases him into the boat. “Four-eighty,” says Uncle Cephus. He knows. He has that kind of an eye. And he has this sea baby in his arms.
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