A cheerful blaze of wood soon caused the kettle to boil, and over my tea-supper I congratulated myself over my lucky adventure, for to lose neither fish, canoe, nor self, was indeed a large slice of luck.

Next day I improvised a pair of scales with the help of a half hundredweight and a seven-pound weight which I possessed, and found to my surprise that the monster weighed one hundred and three pounds.  This was not only the largest eel I ever caught, but the largest I ever saw.  In Guernsey market the heaviest conger I saw was one of sixty-seven pounds—­a baby in comparison to mine!

The weights I used in weighing the monster were stones adjusted to the proper iron weights, which I used as standards, and then by selecting various sized stones obtained after great toil a whole set, from one pound up to ten pounds, and thus could weigh anything.

I had many other fishing adventures, but I think the above was about the most exciting.  I had many good takes of whiting and pollock, but was not so fortunate among the soles, and plaice, and such-like ground game, as my net was a very ramshackle affair of my own construction.

I had also some remarkable miscellaneous captures at different times.  Once in the winter I had laid a long line for codling, and brought up, firmly hooked, a very nice red tablecloth, beautifully worked round the edge by some skilled hand in an Oriental pattern.  I used it on gala days as a flag, and I dare say passers by in the various vessels wondered to what nationality it belonged, as the centre was ornamented with a golden elephant with very curly tusks worked in white beads.  Another day I fished up a copper oil can, such as engineers use to oil machinery with; and yet another time a bag of gravel which had apparently once formed part of a yacht’s ballast.

When I found time heavy on my hands I would often take my canoe about fifty yards south of La Fauconnaire, and with two or three lines fish for rock fish, and never, on a single occasion, returned empty-handed.  The worst part of this performance was digging the bait of lugworms on the little beach of Crevichon.  It was terribly hard work lifting the rocks and boulders aside to find a place to dig, and then it was harder work in digging the nasty worms from the granite grit in which they resided, dwelt, or had their horrid being.  Probably these hairy, oozy creatures have their joys and pleasures, and their woes, just as every other of God’s creatures, but of what their happiness consists who can tell?  Anyway they are good for bait, and so have use if not beauty to commend them.