Short Fiction, Aleksandr Kuprin [the speed reading book txt] 📗

dark night, hundreds of fishing-craft leave the Crimean peninsula and set sail for the open sea.

How glorious is the moment of departure! All five men sit on the prow of the long boat. “God speed! God’s help with you! God speed!”

The loosened sail falls, and, after flapping hesitatingly in the air for some moments, suddenly swells like a sharp, convex, upturned white wing. The boat, careening all the way to one side, gracefully moves out of the mouth of the bay into the open sea. The water sizzles and foams around the prow and the spray dashes into the boat, while one of the fishermen carelessly sits on the very gunwale, the lower hem of his jacket now and then skimming the surface of the water, and with a swaggering air lights a rolled cigarette. Beneath the grate of the prow is kept a small stock of provisions, consisting of strong whiskey, bread, smoked fish, and a barrel of water.

They sail away a distance of some thirty miles from shore. During this long journey, the leader of the crew and his assistant prepare the fishing implements. These consist of a strong rope about a mile long with bits of cord, about two yards long, tied to it at intervals of two or three yards. The pieces of cord are provided with hooks baited with small fish, and the whole thing is sunk to the bottom of the sea by means of two stones which are placed on the ends of the rope and which serve as anchors. Their position is indicated by two cork buoys floating above the anchors on the surface of the sea, and surmounted by small red flags.

The assistant baits the hooks with extraordinary dexterity and rapidity, while the leader carefully coils the rope into a round basket, arranging it in a neat spiral close to the side of the basket. The bait is put inside the circle. The work, done almost in absolute darkness, is not so easy as would appear at first glance. When the time comes for lowering the rope into the water, one carelessly adjusted hook may catch the main cable and hopelessly entangle the entire outfit.

At dawn the place is reached. Each ataman (head of a fishing-gang) has his favorite, “lucky” spots, and he finds them in the open, tens of miles off the coast, as easily as we find a box of steel pens on our desk. The only thing to do is to sail east until the Foros lighthouse is sighted, taking care that the polar star should be visible above the belfry of the monastery of St. George. Every ataman has his secret signs in the form of lighthouses, large rocks, houses, solitary pines on the mountains, or stars.

When the place is selected, the first stone is lowered, soundings are made, and a buoy tied to the anchor. Then the fishermen row the entire length of the rope while the leader pays it out from the basket with a fabulous speed. When the entire rope is in the sea, the second stone is lowered, the buoy adjusted, and the work is done. The fishermen row or sail back to shore, as the wind permits. A day or two later they return to their places and drag out the rope. If Providence wills or chance permits, the hooks with the bait will be swallowed by the sturgeon, and the fishermen will have a rich catch of this big, sharp-nosed fish, which normally weigh from 300 to 700 pounds, and in rare instances even as much as half a ton.

It was thus that, one night, Vanya Andrutzaki put out to sea in his long boat. To tell the truth, no one expected any good to come of his enterprise. Old Andrutzaki had died the preceding spring, and Vanya was much too young as yet. According to the opinion of experienced fishermen he should have served for two years more as a mere oarsman, and then worked another year as an assistant. But instead, he gathered a gang of green youngsters of the devil-may-care sort, rudely scolded his old mother who had begun to weep, abused the grumbling old fishermen with the profanest oaths, and had sailed off, he and his whole crew dead-drunk. His sheep-fur cap was rowdily tilted to the back of his head, and his curly hair, as black as a poodle’s, fell in disorder over his sunburnt forehead as he stood on the prow of his boat.

A stormy gale was blowing on the sea that night, and a thick snow fell. Several fishing-craft came back soon after leaving the bay, for Greek fishermen, in spite of their long experience, are exceedingly prudent, not to say cowardly. “Bad weather,” they said in explanation.

But Vanya Andrutzaki returned about noon, his long boat chock-full of the largest white sturgeon. In addition, he towed in a monstrous fish, a sturgeon weighing about 750 pounds, which the crew had to thump with mallets and oars for a long time before they could put it to death.

This monster had given the crew no little trouble. Fishermen say that, as a rule, it is enough to bring the sturgeon’s head to the level of the stern-board, and it will leap into the boat of its own accord. It is true that sometimes, while leaping into the boat, the sturgeon, with a powerful stroke of its tail, sends the careless fishermen flying into the sea. Besides, in catching sturgeon there are even more serious moments which threaten fishermen with real danger. That is exactly what had happened to Vanya Andrutzaki.

Standing on the very prow, which now rose to the foamy crest of broad waves and now sank into smooth, green water-pits, Vanya hauled in the rope with a rhythmical motion of his arms and back. Five small sturgeons, which had been taken off at the very beginning, lay motionless on the bottom of the boat. Then the catch became poorer: some hundred and