Catching a Conger By lAIN HAMILTON A LOYSIUS was old and

spare, and he wore from week to week the same green-checked shirt, and his pessi- mism was positive and joyous. " When I had to come away from the fishing," he said to me from the door of his white cottage, " boys ! oh boys ! that year anyway the ocean was going barren on us, and now you could sweep the bottom from here the fifteen miles over to Kennaglen and you wouldn't get a feed, no you wouldn't, by God."

His eyes, behind misted lenses, glinted with ancient malice, but Micky Burke was young and bold with his elders, and he laughed openly at old Aloysius, who spat on the doorstep and sulked for a moment like a little old child. " Down at the point of the island here," said Micky, nodding at the hill that humped on the far side of the harbour and hid the sea, " there's a great black hole in the floor of the ocean, and from the top to the bottom it's swarming altogether. Have you ever seen an eel, now ? They're the bad black fellows for sport. Let you take your rowboat, and pull round from the strand and across the mouth of the harbour and away off the point here, and let down your anchor. Put some fresh bait on your hook, and you'll have an eel as thick as your leg whirling like a propellor on it."

Early in the evening I did as he said, and nearly got myself drowned for it. The big stone that I had for anchor on the end of a long painter did not reach the ground but swung loose somewhere in the middle depths of the black hole; and as I was hauling it up again a sudden wind and the beginnings of the flood put the little boat in against the rough face of the granite headland. There was no easy drifting in these narrow archipelagic waters, and it took me half an hour to pull the distance I had travelled in ten minutes on the way out. Old Aloysius, lover of long chats with strangers, was down on the strand to meet me.

" Sure it's a risky light thing, that," he said of my dinghy, " just a handy -small little boat for harbours and the like, but not for the seaway at all or near it." He gave me a nudge when I had pulled the boat up. " Come away round here with me, till I show you how you'll get an eel, if you want one."

As we walked along the strand he pulled a length of thick line from his pocket. " There now," he said. " I've put a fancy swivel hook on it for you, for on any other an eel will destroy your line entirely, and there's a lead weight'll carry it to the bottom. There's a way down over the hill there to the point itself and the big rock, that you saw from the sea maybe, where there's an old iron pin was used in the days when ships still came in from the Roads through the islands to the mainland." When we reached his cottage he put his hand into a bucket outside the door and took out the head of a big bream. " When you get down there put this on the hook, and throw the line out into the middle of the hole, and make the end fast to the pin."

" Micky was right ? " I said. " Oh boys ! oh boys ! " he declared. " But I was pulling monsters out of there before Micky Burke was born."

" Do you like an eel for a feed ? " said I. " Man," he replied. " I never yet put such dirty meat in my mouth, and I know nobody hereabout who would either. It was for lobster-bait we took them only."

" Are they as big as Micky says ? " " Micky's a boy knows nothing of eels or anything else In the line of the sea. Sure in the old times you'd think nothing at all of one snarled up in your nets twice the length of your- self. Out there once I had one of them on a line, and I towed it threshing round by your strand to the big house to show it to the visiting gentry, and one of them put a rule on it, and it was thirteen feet from its nose to its tail." _ " Here's hoping," said I. " Ach, surely to God there'll be a little one in it, anyhow." He seated himself on the summit of the headland while I crept down the face of it to the tumbled blocks of pink granite. When I had thrown the line out I returned to Aloysius, and we passed a pleasant time. But in half an hour he urged me to go and look at the line. " They snoke, snoke, snake round the bottom, these black boys, and they'll sniff out a fresh bait in no time at all, and if you left them too long they'd chew through steel itself."

Halfway down the cliffside I paused and looked out to sea, and here was young Micky Burke -skiffing up in his curragh with a pile of lobster-pots in the stern. I pointed to my line.

" You didn't take the boat, then ? - he called up. " He did so, Micky Burke," the old one cried from the top of the hill, " and he got home safe, no thanks to you."

Micky grinned and paddled in close to the point. The boat of canvas and tar skidded like a feather over the slanting march of the waves.

" Have you got anything there ? " he said.

" I shouldn't think so," said I, beginning the downward crawl again.

" It's tight all the same," he said reflectively, and, putting his paddle down by his knees, leaned out and took hold of the line where it went into the water. " Sure there's something here now."

" Pull it in, Micky boy," Aloysius cried. I was displeased. for that was the thing I wanted to do myself.

Micky had to take two hands to it, and it seemed a great labour to him to get the line moving without pulling his curragh over. But at length a black snout came waggling out of the water and looked into the boat, while a flattened tail slapped the surface.

" Quick," called Aloysius. " Get him in before the line goes." " Indeed I will not do that," said Micky, " and have him eating the toes off my feet."

" Shall I take it ? " I asked unwillingly, moving out to a precarious stance on the rock.

" Ach, you'd never deal with him there at all," said Mitky reasonably. " I'll tow him round to the harbour for you."

By the time Aloysius and I were halfway across the strand we came on Micky dragging five and a half feet of eel behind him. " He's a nice wee fellow," said he. " What are you going to do with him ? " He handed me the line.

Old Aloysius knew helplessness when-he saw it. " Have you a knife about you ? " he asked Micky, and the boy said that he had. " Well, kill the serpent for the man," said Aloysius. Micky gave it a great kick on the tail, but that only put more life into it. " With your knife, boy," said Aloysius testily. " Kill him and gut him." " And the creature living like that." said Micky. " I will not." He handed the knife to Aloysius who gave me an archaic smile and a wink

and put a hobnailed boot on the eel's head. It lashed out

again with its tail and slithered away. " Now be damned for a bad beast," said Aloysius spitefully, and planted his foot more firmly on the slimy body. " See here now. Micky," ho said scornfully, and, plunging the point of the knife into the grey belly, went on to disemllbwel the eel. Throughout this bloody surgery the eel went on panting (for that was what it looked like) in the same steady rhythm. " I'd go a long way," said Micky in disgust, "before I'd do the like of that." "Sure you do it with fish," said Aloysius, throwing the offal away over a wall into a potato-patch above the strand. " A fish is a different thing altogether," said Micky. " There now," said Aloysius, straightening himself and handing me the line and its twitching burden. I pulled the gutless eel up until its jaw, moving still, was on a level with my chest. " Do you tell me you'll eat it ? " I said that I would, with a confidence which I no longer felt. " Do you say so ? " said Aloysius, so solemnly and with such a show of dismay that Micky burst out laughing. So did I. So did old Aloysius. He blinked, spat, smiled and kicked a stone to show his amazement. " Boys ! oh boys ! " he said. " Oh boys I Oh-boys ! "