And yet this man is possessed of an unshakable faith that by some
mysterious legerdemain of chance a fish, with ten thousand square miles of
water to swim in safely, will seek out the little minnow less than an inch
in length which he has lowered beside the breakwater. And so, the victim
of preposterous conviction, he sits and eyes the tip of his fishpole with
unflagging hope.

It is warm. The sun spreads a brightly colored but uncomfortable woolen
blanket over their heads. A tepid breeze, reminiscent of cinders, whirl
idly over the warm cement. Strung along the pier are a hundred figures,
all in identical postures. They sit in defiance of all logic, all
mathematics. For it is easy to calculate that if there are a half million
fish in Lake Michigan and each fish displaces less than five cubic inches
of water there would be only two and a half million cubic inches of fish
altogether lost in an expanse containing at least eight hundred billion
cubic inches of water. Therefore, the chance of one fish being at any one
particular spot are one in four hundred thousand. In other words, the odds
against each of these strangely patient men watching the ends of their
fishpoles--the odds against their catching a fish--are four hundred
thousand to one.

* * * * *

It is therefore somewhat amazing to stand and watch what happens along the
sunny breakwater. Every three minutes one of the poles jerks out of the
water with a wriggling prize on the hook.

"How are they coming?" we ask.