All The Way Read Free

good, too. I’d enjoyed fishing with them.
    It was a few minutes before nine and Key West was down on the horizon when we crossed the edge of the Stream shortly to the south and east of Sand Key light. It was beautiful, running dark as indigo in a ragged line beyond the reefs with just enough breeze to ripple the light ground-swell rolling up from the south-east. The Blue Runner slowed, and Sam the Mate came down from topside. He swung out the outriggers, nodded for Mrs. Forsyth to take the port chair, and put out her line, baited with balao. She watched as he clipped it to the outrigger halyard and ran it out to the end. He fitted the butt of the rod into the gimbal in her chair.
    She took it and looked round at me. “Now what do I do?”
    Normally I detest people who want to talk when I’m fishing, but this was different. I was curious about her, and becoming more so all the time. “Just watch your bait,” I said. “You see it? A little to your right, and about seventy-five feet back?”
    She looked. It skipped across the surface momentarily, and slid under again, fluttering. “Yes. I can see it now.”
    “Keep your eye on it,” I said. “Watch it every minute-”
    She nodded. “That’s so I’ll know when I get a bite?”
    I restrained an impulse to wince. “Strike,” I said. “These fish out here don’t nibble; they hit. But that’s not the reason for watching it. You’ll know when you get a strike, whether you see it or not. Sam or the Skipper will tell you, for one thing. Sam’ll be standing up in back of the chair, and the Skipper’s topside, so they can both see down into the water better than we can because our angle’s too flat and there’s more defraction. They’ll always see the fish before you will, and they’ll generally know what it is by the time it hits. But if you don’t see it, you’re losing half the fun of this type of fishing. The strike is the big thrill. It’s like dry-fly fishing, on a magnified scale.”
    I glanced at her. She was wearing dark glasses now, so I couldn’t see her eyes, but I had that feeling I’d had the other times that she was hanging onto every word with rapt attention. Sam handed me the other rod. I threw the reel on free spool and thumbed it lightly while he ran the line up the outrigger. For the time I forgot her, watching my own bait with the old eager anticipation while we trolled quietly. The sun was hot. Flying fish skittered out of the blue side of a swell. A tanker in ballast went past to seaward, rocking us in its wake. Water boiled under my bait, and there was a slight click as the line snapped off the outrigger.
    “Mackerel,” Holt said laconically.
    I lowered the rod tip till the slack was gone, and then raised it, setting the hook. It was a small one, not over three pounds. “Good marlin bait,” Sam said, as he grasped the leader and dropped it in the box. I glanced at Mrs. Forsyth. She was lighting a cigarette. The fish appeared to bore her. Well, it wasn’t much of a fish.
    An hour went by. I landed a barracuda of about fifteen pounds, and then a bonito that came in badly slashed by barracuda. She had no action at all, but she didn’t appear to mind. She seemed to be lost in thought. We went on trolling. I watched my bait.
    “Bird,” Sam said behind us.
    “I see him,” Holt replied. The beat of the engine picked up, and we swung in a sharp turn.
    Mrs. Forsyth glanced round at me. “We aren’t going to chase birds, are we?”
    “Man-o”-war,” I said. “A frigate bird.” I stood up and looked forward, and spotted him. He was about a half-mile ahead, off the starboard bow. She stuck her rod in the holder on the rail and came over to look too.
    “When you see one hovering like that,” I told her, “he’s usually following a fish—”
    “Why?” she asked.
    “Table scraps,” I explained. “When the fish locates a school of bait and starts to feed, he drives them to the surface. That gives the bird a chance at