The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-01-16

Beebe's beat is ten feet long and foot
 and a half wide, and it will capsize if
 the paddle catches in the water. Then
 she rights it with one hand, wriggles
 into it somehow, balls 1t out, wrings her
 hair and goes ahead. The boat is made
 of gum tree, is nearly as white as lily
 and is named Belle Aurore.
 In AIphonse's boat were twenty one
 gallon stone jugs, empty and stopped
 tightly with corn-cobs. To the handle
 of each was line as thick as mans
 little finger, eight feet long, with a
 huge black hook at the end There was,
 too, basket of bait made of old cheese,
 mixed with loose cotton to make 1t
 stick; in some of the balls of cheese
 were fresh shrimp, whose heads and
 tails stuck out. A white man went
 along in Alphonses boat to see the fun,
 and Beebe had luncheon of fried fish,
 corn mullins and black coffee made &C.,
 cording to the French market recipe and carried in a bottle. The girls 1.-the form on the stern-seat bant forward
 far she dug her paddle into the water,
 her brown barred arms described half
 circle and the Belle Aurore sprang
 twenty feet up the current. Alphousa
 followed soberly his strokes slower and
 stiffer, but more powerful, and the yell
 low water raced past. Eight miles up
 the river is PIsle de Mort, where a
 steamer blew up many years ago, and
 Alphonse said that the catfish, attracted
 then by the feast, had made it their
 home ever since. It was reached in an
 hour and the old negro guided his boat
 into little cove, where he showed her
 nose into the sand, rolled slowly out and
 took his first drink and first pipe of the
 day. Bebee measuring the liquor and
 filling the pipe with perique.
 | The sun was blazing like furnace
 when fishing began, Three hundred yards from the upper end of the island Alphonse baited the hooks and tossed his twenty jugs overheard They float ed buoyantly each line hanging straight, weighted by an ounce of lead. The two pirogues drifted slowly along some yards above them. Half mile had been covered, and on the fat face of the fisherman a cloud was gather ing, when one of the jugs on the ,.ght wing of the fleet disappeared with swirl and came to the surface thirty yards away travelling rapidly across the stream. Alphonse yelled "Vite, done." and Bebee was after it like a flash. The catfish underneath, which thought that it had struck some new kind of stinging insect, dashed franti- cally about, zigzagging fiercely, some times taking the jug out of sight, to re- appear fifty yards away, at others weaving laziy a ong or travelling in cir cles. Always the pirogue stuck to 1t like kingbird after a dragon-fly. More than once, in sudden turns, the water ran up to its gunwale, and AL phonse grunted savagely, but it did not tip past the danger point, and the girls strong, white teeth showed in wide smile as her broad thin paddle slashed the water vicously. At length, with a sudden dart, she passed the jug, and, reaching out, grasped it by the neck. A moment later she had shifted her hold to the line, and hauled in five feet of it by main strength. The fish fought hard, but she was tco strong for 1t, and a moment later it was Tapping in the bottom Of the boat. It was a blue" or "channel' cat, of not more than ten pounds weight but plump and active. This fish is one of the fastest and most savage of the river tribes. It seldom SUGS ONtT ulleel pQuiluS' II IL Nao "S large as the yellow" mud" or bull- head bat, there would be no handling it. Before detaching the hook from it's mouth Bebee drew on pair of thick gloves and set a heavily-shod foot on it's head, for it's fins are noxious, slight Pash from one of them producing an in- famed wound that may result in blood poisoning.
 After the capture of the "blue" cat the sport became fast Always some one of the jugs was in rapid motion, and sometimes a half-dozen of them were ripping along the surface ot once. The fat Alphonse, precipitation pouring down his black face in fifty streams. and his breath coming in loud wheeZes, surged fiercely about in the big pirogue, while the girl seemed like some cratic thing with wings as she skinned the water with rush after rush, each seemingly swifter than the last. Some of her strokes carried her a good thirty feet, and before the boat lost tithe of it's headway the driving paddle was two feet into the water again and her one hundred and forty pounds were sway ing back upon the handle. In this ex- citing and laborious time neither of the | fisher couple took the trouble to cap- | ture any of the fish alive. They were | hauled in savagely, and as the head ap- | peared near the surface the life was smitten from 1t with gatf made from ! the blade of a cane-knife and fastened | to three-foot pole. The hands of both were scared repeatedly by the fins of dying fish, but beyond sousing them for q moment in the warm water and sucking the gash for a moment no att tention was raid to any injury. Four miles below the island all of the jugs were rebaited, and more than a dozen cats were in the big boat. Alphonse ex- plained that he would not trust the girl with them, as she was likely to over urn at any time, and she ought not to nave been allowed to take the first one.
 Opposite Point de Reve two miles lbove the cabin, one of the jugs hurtled through the water with a speed double hat of any previous strike, and the small eyes of the 'Cadan negro glis- .ened as he saw it. "A big fellow" he as he drove his paddle in. Indeed, it was a big one headed straight down the stream and going so ast that for little while the pirogue made no appreciable gain. Hard as the