Poissy

“ Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only the courage to attempt it; but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to the southward. ”

“ The bright sun and the gentle wind had made the little fish almost bold that summer day, enough so that they were swimming all over the pond, from their home in the reeds at one end to the rocky beach at the other. Or at least they swam very near to the rocky beach—as near as they dared—for all the older fish constantly warned them to stay away. Some of the dangers were clear enough, such as the wading birds who stepped into the shallow water, hoping to pluck out a little fish and swallow him right down, and the foxes, whose gigantic teeth were too awful even to think about. ”

“ As they bend over, the sheen from the water lights up the faces of the struggling men.140 There is satisfaction in every coarse and bloated line. As the net moves the surface of the pool becomes troubled, a fin or a tail cuts through the water: the salmon, though enmeshed, are exerting themselves to escape. But in vain, for, with an oath at the coldness of the water, the elder poacher steps into the pool, going deeper and deeper till the water rises to his shoulders, till he is able to force the pole and its heavily-laden bag-net to the surface and then ashore. ”

“ When this girl reached womanhood, her father and mother being dead, Poseidon fell in love with her and made her his wife. He encircled the hill on which she lived with alternate girdles of land and water, greater and less, making two of land and three of water, each uniformly distant from the centre of the island, in order to render her habitation inaccessible to men, for at that time ships and sea-faring were unknown. ”

“ A few living things distract our melancholy. Young porpoises, with silver bellies and slender snouts, play around the hull, lashing the water as if with thongs of whipcord, falling back with a gleaming graceful movement. The old porpoises, mere dignified, follow patiently their continual leapings, sewing the cloth of the sea with an invisible thread; each one of their stitches on this blue material leaves a streak of foam. ”

“ In the best and most polished society,
And he looked at the fisherman full in the face
With a visible air of anxiety:
He murmered "Alas!" from his place in the grass,
And then, when he'd twisted and wriggled, he
Remarked in a pet that his heart was upset
And digestion all higgledy-piggledy.
"I request," he observed, "to be instantly flung
Once again in the pool I've been living in."
The fisherman said, "You will tire out your tongue.
Do you see any signs of my giving in?
Put you back in the pool? Why, you fatuous fool,
I have eaten much smaller and thinner fish. ”

“ But the crowning charm of the place to Posey was the chattering brook that with many a curve and bend, as if seeking excuse to linger, ran in a little hollow through the centre of the pasture. A clear, sparkling little stream, gurgling and hurrying through the sunlit spaces, loitering in the shadows of the willows whose green fingers bent down to meet its current, with shallow places where one could wade or cross on stepping-stones, and deep pools where minnows loved to gather and hide them under the trailing grasses of the banks. ”

“ Ben explained, for teams to pass each other. Which set Posey to wondering what people would do if they met in any other than the right spot.
“But they have to meet there,” Ben asserted. “When one person sees another [Pg 125] coming he stops and waits. There’s no trouble when everybody looks out.”
But what was to Posey the crowning charm was a wide drainage ditch or canal, near the outer edge of the swamp, the cause of the fringe of dead bushes she had already noticed. ”

“ Poisseux, m. (familiar) , dandy, or “masher.” For list of synonyms see Gommeux.
Les petits jeunes gens, les poisseux, les boudinés ... étaient à leur poste.—A. Sirven, Au Pays des Roublards.
Dandies used to apply the epithet to a cad, a “rank outsider.”
[348]
Poisson, m. (familiar and popular) , one who lives on the earnings of a prostitute, whom he terms “sa marmite,” as providing him with his daily bread.
Seulement ... tout souteneur qui ne venge pas sa largue est considéré comme un fainéant. Il est condamné par la bande des poissons.—Mémoires de Monsieur Claude. ”

“ I have other vessels ten times faster than this schooner, and generally you will come with me in my visits.”
“That we will, doctor,” said Point Pescade, rubbing his hands.
“Are you afraid of the sea?” asked the doctor.
“Afraid of the sea!” exclaimed Point Pescade. “Children of Provence! Ragamuffins rolling about in the coast boats! No! We are not afraid of the sea, nor of the pretended sickness it yields. ”

“ Nothing, my dear George, can be more beautiful than the play of a vigorous salmon. The lubberly struggles of a pond fish are execrable to him who has felt the exquisite pleasure that attends the conquest of “the monarch of the stream.” His bold rushes—his sudden and rapid attempts to liberate himself from the fisher’s thrall—the energy with which he throws his silver body three or four feet above the surface of the water, and the unwearied and incessant opposition he makes until his strength is exhausted by the angler’s science. ”

“ Posey is a sparely built, muscular man, of medium size, quick and jerky in his movements, and springy in his gait. His face is broad and tanned, his cheek bones high, and his nose a snub. His beard is short and thin and grizzled, and his gray hair, curling at the ends, hangs around his neck. His shoulders are sloping, his chest deep but not wide, his arms long, and his hips narrow. He is always dressed in a blue flannel shirt, blue overalls, hob-nailed shoes, and a gray slouch hat; and the whole outfit is always very old and very dirty. ”

“ He stood as if ready to bolt, but I laughed, and settled back on my oars, saying: "You're a poacher; but I don't care a continental, and you can poach all day in this confounded country, where there is about one trout to the kilometre. Don't look scared. What do I care? Only don't tell me I'm unable to distinguish a trout when I can see the tip of his nose." ”

“ And even as when the sight of land is welcome to swimmers, whose well-wrought ship Poseidon hath smitten on the deep, all driven with the wind and swelling waves, and but a remnant hath escaped the gray sea water and swum to the shore, and their bodies are all crusted with the brine, and gladly have they set foot on land and escaped an evil end ”

“ To see a porpoise leap high out of the water like a salmon is a fine sight, but to see two or three whales at one and the same time thus disporting themselves, while some lie in the water beating time with their terrible tails, others playing at leap frog, and the sea for acres round them churned into froth and meerschaum, is a sight that once seen can never be forgotten. ”

“ For taking this fish, the people of this region have two methods. The first is to use a boat with a white bottom, behind which the fisherman tows a small wooden porpoise, which is painted a dark slate color, in imitation of the young of the species. With these lures the porpoise is often brought into the immediate vicinity of the harpoon, which is invariably thrown with fatal precision. In this manner an expert man will often take three or four fine prizes in a day. ”

“ They strike easily, and put up a jerky kind of battle. They are a long, slim fish, yellow and white [Pg 188] in the water, a glistening pale bronze and silver when landed. I hooked a harder-fighting fish, which, when brought in, proved to be a white sea-bass, a very beautiful species with faint purplish color and mottled opal tints above the deep silver.
Next morning we left the bay at six thirty. It was the calmest day we had had in days. The sea was like a beveled mirror, oily, soft, and ethereal, with low swells barely moving. ”

“ The Gazelle was the “punt” or longshore boat which Posh bought at Southwold, and called (by reason of her splendid qualities) The Little Wonder.
The difference between “sunk” and “swum” herring nets would be unintelligible to a modern herring fisher. Now the nets are thirty feet in depth, are buoyed on the surface of the sea, and are kept perpendicular (like a wall two miles long) by the weight of heavy cables or “warps” which stretch along the bottom of the nets. I am, of course, referring to North Sea fishing only, and not to the longshore punts, p. ”

“ Long living on shore has rid his skin of any scaly look, but the fish blood is there just the same. He can dive to the bottom of the pool and stay there looking up at you with glassy eyes, for all the world like a sulky trout. ”

“ Of all poachers of salmon, perhaps that one with whom one is least out of sympathy was the man—is he now extinct, one wonders?—who, fishing with trout-rod and fly, and bearing on his back the most modest of trout creels, instantly, when he came to a likely cast for a fish, was wont to change his trout fly for a salmon one. ”

“ Nevertheless, I took my glass and swept the sea far and wide in search of a ship, but failed to discover anything but a spermaceti whale blowing in the distance, or a shoal of porpoises tumbling over each other nearer the shore, or a colony of seals basking in the sun on the rocks nearest the sea. My disappointment was shared by Nero, who seemed to regard my vexation with a sympathising glance, and even the gannets turned their dull stupid gaze upon me, with an expression as if they deeply commiserated my distress. ”

“ Save in the mirthfulness of which he is an ever-bubbling spring, Posey has become, in looks and gestures, in mode of thought and manner of expression, as much Indian as white. Nevertheless, he prefers, very greatly, the society of his own race, and likes best that of people of superior mental qualities and force of character. In Posey's creed there is but one article, namely, that all men are eternally and immutably equal—just as good as he is. ”

“ Pausanias, III. 21, 5: “Men fear to fish in the Lake of Poseidon, for they think he who catches fish in it is turned into a fish called The Fisher.” In I. 38, 1, we find that only the priests were allowed to fish, because the rivers were sacred to Demeter, and in VII. 22, 4, that the fish at Pharae were sacred to Hermes, and so inviolate.
[286] In gratitude for the part played by certain fish in bringing to the banks of the Euphrates the egg, from which came Aphrodite, Zeus placed fishes among the stars—hence the Pisces. ”

“ Once we sighted a whale, once we caught a young shark, and several times we had a porpoise hunt. These were quite exciting. One of the men, armed with a harpoon, would take his stand in the chains ready to strike at any polished back as it rose or rolled beneath him; another man stood by with a bowline to be slipped instantly over the tail of the “catch” by way of support, while Floss and Darkie, rigid with excitement, paws upon the rail, hindfeet on the deck, rapturously barked and squealed. Once a porpoise did get “fixed” ”

“ We bring with us a large stock of that glorious fresh feeling which ever so slight a taste of bush-life gives, and some wonder why so few fishing men in England find their way to the splendid rivers and lakes of North America, and fish enough to live on for weeks (if they would but keep) for the especial gratification of those of our friends who care for such luxuries as trout. ”

“ The overturning of the brig, even with the consequent loss of the wine and turtle, would not, in fact, have rendered our situation more deplorable than before, except for the disappearance of the bedclothes by which we had been hitherto enabled to catch rainwater, and of the jug in which we had kept it when caught; for we found the whole bottom, from within two or three feet of the bends as far as the keel, together with the keel itself, thickly covered with large barnacles, which proved to be excellent and highly nutritious food. ”

“ As the fisherman who, pulling hard on the long, heavy line quivering, he fancies, with the weight of the one big fish he has been angling for so long, finally redoubles his caution and skill, as, with a thrill, he sees two great shadowy fishes instead of one rising from the depths, so Pasotti, upon hearing this allusion to the engineer, was thrilled and amazed, and began preparing, with the most exquisitely delicate touch, to draw out this secret concerning Signor Giacomo and Ribera. ”

“ With thorough, bred seamen to clamber up the roughly fashioned plank-work was a trifle; and maddened with the twofold excitement of exercise and liquor, they leaped unhesitatingly down within the enclosure, and holding on their drunken course with shouts and yellings, were soon bewildered in its noisome and intricate recesses. ”

“ The canoe had no sooner grounded than the white man leapt ashore-and ran up the beach. Felisi found him at the bank of the stream—the sand had risen to the chin of "the law"—tugging and straining with his one hand. ”

“ Now this cause having been removed, as we have seen, rather abruptly—not lowered by gradual progress, but suddenly, and to many, unexpectedly—as yet no counterpoise has been applied to supply the place; so that the people, in the time of public excitement, are like a vessel that has suddenly lost her rudder in an Atlantic gale. ”