BEN BUTTLES'S GREAT CATCH.—Drawn by M. J. Burns.

THE SURPRISING EXPERIENCE OF BEN BUTTLES.

BY FRANK H. CONVERSE.

Part First.

Every boy realizes the fascination of fishing, even if he gets nothing but bites—mosquito bites at that. It is the anticipation of what one may catch which heightens the every charm of the sport itself.

But taking flounders from the wharf, or trout in the mill-stream, is quite a different thing from cod or pollock fishing in thirty fathoms of green sea. The one may sometimes be the pursuit of pleasure under difficulties; the other is generally the pursuit of business under danger. So at least most of you would have said had you seen "the widow Buttles's Ben" at the time when my story begins.

He was standing upright in a fourteen-foot dory, and I may add that the dory, generally speaking, was also standing upright, which is not so surprising, for, in the first place, the wind was blowing half a gale; in the second place, Ben's boat was anchored, with fifty fathom of scope near the "Breaking Shoals," and by chart Breaking Shoals bear E.N.E. from Covert Point, distance three and a quarter miles, with nothing nearer than Europe to check the force of the Atlantic billows.

"No idea it was so late," muttered Ben, a little anxiously, as he began to reel up one of the lines. "Looks baddish to wind'ard, and the sea is getting up," he added, with a rapid glance from the cloud-bank behind which the sun had set to the heaving ocean about him. A landsman would have supposed that the sea had already got up. How Ben kept his balance so easily, as the dory "ran" on the slopes of the great waves, which slipped from under its flat bottom with such startling suddenness, would seem marvellous to any one except a person living alongshore. But Ben Buttles was perfectly at home in his dory; for in the little sea-board village of Covert, whose distant lights were just visible through the gathering darkness, every man owned some kind of a boat, while every other man was "Cap'n" or "Skipper." Hence the most that troubled Ben was the thought that he had been so taken up with fishing as to forget that the sun had begun to set, the tide to ebb, and a gale to rise.

"And I promised mother to be home by dark— Gorry-buster!"

This last untranslatable word was called forth by a tremendous tug at his other line, which he had just taken up.

"Why, I must have hooked on to an anchor," gasped Ben, as he pulled and panted. But an anchor would never have darted off like mad when it was near the surface, taking thirty or forty fathoms of his line before he could check it. And as Ben, who was sturdy and strong for his age, began to haul in his line by main force a fathom at a time, he well knew what it was he had hooked.

"I never caught one, but I know just how it's done," he said, setting his teeth firmly together, as the great fish, now nearly alongside, began to show signs of being exhausted by its struggles.

Holding his shortened line firmly in his left hand, Ben picked up his "gaff"—a short pole, to one end of which a stout hook is affixed. As the dory sank into a great chasm of water, he threw his weight on one side, pressing the gunwale level with the water, so that it almost touched the side of his finny prey. One dexterous movement of both hands and knees, and the halibut—for this was the kind of fish he had secured—was fairly "scooped" into the dory, where it was quickly stunned by a blow on the head.

Ben was exultant, but there was little time in which to pat himself on the shoulder. The gale had been growing and the gloom increasing while he was absorbed in his exciting sport. The dory was tugging at her "killock" like a mad thing, as though realizing the necessity for making an immediate change of base.

He lost no time in getting his anchor, with which he also got a thorough drenching, and began to pull vigorously toward Covert Light, which was streaming out through the storm and gloom. But, alas! hardly had he taken a dozen strokes when his starboard oar snapped off close to the blade, where he had spliced it the day before.

To think was to act with the widow's Ben. Backing water with the other oar to keep the dory "head on" for a moment, he drew it rapidly inboard. Seizing the end of the bow painter, he made a clove-hitch round the middle of the whole oar and the disabled one, lashing the two firmly together. Then, just as the dory was on the