Night-time fishing.

[Kitosdad]

The North Sea rolled toward the beach in slow, dark ominous swells.
Maurice and I were enjoying our usual "all-nighter," fishing for cod.
Every Saturday night we indulged ourselves in our favourite hobby, in spite of our parent's warnings that a dark beach was no place to be spending the night.
We were both sixteen years old, and of course, we felt we knew better.

This particular beach was infamous for its treacherous shifting sands, and we were always careful to stay well back from the water's edge.
Of course it was necessary to wade into the water if you wanted to cast into the deeper water, and this we did regularly, fearing not for our own safety.
We would both fish with two rods, which were supported by tubes driven deeply into the soft sand.

It was bitterly cold this particular January evening, with a clear, star-studded sky, and barely a whisper of wind. A perfect night for cod.
As the water crept ever closer we were obliged to keep moving our equipment further back from the water-line.

After having just completed one such move, Maurice's rod bucked violently in its holder.
Grabbing the rod with both hands he attempted to reel in his catch, but it was almost impossible to do so.
We decided that he should stop trying, and to just walk backwards up the beach, dragging his catch ashore.
By maintaining a steady pressure on his line and judging the incoming swells, he was able to bring his catch into the shallower water.
I rushed eagerly forward with a huge torch and was terrified when I saw it was a man's body, all bloated, with the skin rubbed raw from his contact with the sharp sand.

I told Maurice to hold tight while I rushed up to the promenade and phoned the Police to inform them of our "catch."
Within minutes both the Police and an ambulance appeared on the promenade.
The ambulance men placed the body on a stretcher and took it away.
The Policeman took our details and told us that we would be required to attend a court inquest in the coming days.

We resumed our fishing and our conversation naturally centred around our horrendous experience.
A few minutes later I walked into the water, preparing to cast into the deeper water, when I felt a bump on the side of my legs.
I hastily stepped back, not wanting to fall into the cold North sea.
I bent forward to train my headlight onto whatever had bumped me, and was horrified to see it was yet another body floating in the water.
Running from the water I told Maurice about what had happened.
He was at first reluctant to believe me, but as I started to run up the beach, he finally did.
I again rang the Police, and again, the Police and another ambulance appeared very quickly on the promenade.

Rushing to the water's edge the policeman and the two medics entered the water, but they were unable to find the body. I spent ten minutes convincing them that I had seen a body in the water.
They left, after grudgingly thanking us for "wasting their time," but the very next day the body was found, lodged between rocks further along the beach.

Two bodies in one night was sufficient to deter Maurice and I from fishing there at night ever again, and from then on we only fished there during the daylight hours.
Later it was discovered that the bodies were both foreign seamen who had lost their lives after being washed overboard in heavy seas a couple of days earlier.

Kitos.
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