Boys
are never so busy as when they are up to some piece of mischief, and
evidently the pair had business of this sort in hand. Peer Troen,
fair-haired and sallow-faced, was pushing a wheelbarrow; his companion,
Martin Bruvold, a dark youth with freckles, carried a tub. And both
talked mysteriously in whispers, casting anxious glances out over the
water.
Peer Troen was, of course, the ringleader. That he always was: the
forest fire of last year was laid at his door. And now he had made it
clear to some of his friends that boys had just as much right to lay
out deep-sea lines as men. All through the winter they had been kept at
grown-up work, cutting peat and carrying wood; why should they be left
now to fool about with the inshore fishing, and bring home nothing
better than flounders and coal-fish and silly codlings? The big deep-sea
line they were forbidden to touch--that was so--but the Lofoten fishery
was at its height, and none of the men would be back till it was over.
So the boys had baited up the line on the sly down at the boathouse the
day before, and laid it out across the deepest part of the fjord.
Now the thing about a deep-sea line is that it may bring to the surface
fish so big and so fearsome that the like has never been seen before.
Yesterday, however, there had been trouble of a different sort. To their
dismay, the boys had found that they had not sinkers enough to weight
the shore end of the line; and it looked as if they might have to give
up the whole thing.
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