Tales Of Fishes (1928) Page 6

  Watching him thus, I reveled in my wonderful luck. Up to this date there had been only three of these rare fish caught in twenty-five years of Avalon fishing. And this one was far larger than those that had been taken.

  "Lift him! Closer!" called Captain Dan. "In two minutes I'll have a gaff in him!"

  I made a last effort. Dan reached for the leader.

  Then the hook tore out.

  My swordfish, without a movement of tail or fin, slowly sank--to vanish in the blue water.

  * *

  After resting my blistered hands for three days, which time was scarcely long enough to heal them, I could not resist the call of the sea.

  We went off Seal Rocks and trolled about five miles out. We met a sand-dabber who said he had seen a big broadbill back a ways. So we turned round. After a while I saw a big, vicious splash half a mile east, and we made for it. Then I soon espied the fish.

  We worked around him awhile, but he would not take a barracuda or a flying-fish.

  It was hard to keep track of him, on account of rough water. Soon he went down.

  Then a little later I saw what Dan called a Marlin. He had big flippers, wide apart. I took him for a broadbill.

  We circled him, and before he saw a bait he leaped twice, coming about half out, with belly toward us. He looked huge, but just how big it was impossible to say.

  After a while he came up, and we circled him. As the bait drifted round before him--twenty yards or more off--he gave that little wiggle of the tail sickle, and went under. I waited. I had given up hope when I felt him hit the bait. Then he ran off, pretty fast. I let him have a long line. Then I sat down and struck him. He surged off, and we all got ready to watch him leap. But he did not show.

  He swam off, sounded, came up, rolled around, went down again. But we did not get a look at him. He fought like any other heavy swordfish.

  In one and one-half hours I pulled him close to the boat, and we all saw him. But I did not get a good look at him as he wove to and fro behind the boat.

  Then he sounded.

  I began to work on him, and worked harder. He seemed to get stronger all the time.

  "He feels like a broadbill, I tell you," I said to Captain Dan.

  Dan shook his head, yet all the same he looked dubious.

  Then began a slow, persistent, hard battle between me and the fish, the severity of which I did not realize at the time. In hours like those time has wings. My hands grew hot. They itched, and I wanted to remove the wet gloves. But I did not, and sought to keep my mind off what had been half-healed blisters. Neither the fish nor I made any new moves, it all being plug on his part and give and take on mine. Slowly and doggedly he worked out toward the sea, and while the hours passed, just as persistently he circled back.

  Captain Dan came to stand beside me, earnestly watching the rod bend and the line stretch. He shook his head.

  "That's a big Marlin and you've got him foul-hooked," he asserted. This statement was made at the end of three hours and more. I did not agree.

  Dan and I often had arguments. He always tackled me when I was in some such situation as this--for then, of course, he had the best of it. My brother Rome was in the boat that day, an intensely interested observer.

  He had not as yet hooked a swordfish.

  "It's a German submarine!" he declared.

  My brother's wife and the other ladies with us on board were inclined to favor my side; at least they were sorry for the fish and said he must be very big.

  "Dan, I could tell a foul-hooked fish," I asserted, positively. "This fellow is too alive--too limber. He doesn't sag like a dead weight."

  "Well, if he's not foul-hooked, then you're all in," replied the captain.

  Cheerful acquiescence is a desirable trait in any one, especially an angler who aspires to things, but that was left out in the ordering of my complex disposition. However, to get angry makes a man fight harder, and so it was with me.

  At the end of five hours Dan suggested putting the harness on me. This contrivance, by the way, is a thing of straps and buckles, and its use is to fit over an angler's shoulders and to snap on the rod. It helps him lift the fish, puts his shoulders more into play, rests his arms.

  But I had never worn one. I was afraid of it.

  "Suppose he pulls me overboard, with that on!" I exclaimed. "He'll drown me!"

  "We'll hold on to you," replied Dan, cheerily, as he strapped it around me.

  Later it turned out that I had exactly the right view concerning this harness, for Dustin Farnum was nearly pulled overboard and--But I have not space for that story here. My brother Rome wants to write that story, anyhow, because it is so funny, he says.

  On the other hand, the fact soon manifested itself to me that I could lift a great deal more with said harness to help. The big fish began to come nearer and also he began to get mad. Here I forgot the pain in my hands. I grew enthusiastic. And foolishly I bragged. Then I lifted so hard that I cracked the great Conroy rod.

  Dan threw up his hands. He quit, same as he quit the first day out, when I hooked the broadbill and the reel froze.

  "Disqualified fish, even if you ketch him--which you won't," he said, dejectedly.

  "Crack goes thirty-five dollars!" exclaimed my brother. "Sure is funny, brother, how you can decimate good money into the general atmosphere!"

  If there really is anything fine in the fighting of a big fish, which theory I have begun to doubt, certainly Captain Dan and Brother R. C. did not know it.

  Remarks were forthcoming from me, I am ashamed to state, that should not have been. Then I got Dan to tie splints on the rod, after which I fought my quarry some more. The splints broke. Dan had to bind the cracked rod with heavy pieces of wood and they added considerable weight to what had before felt like a ton.

  The fish had been hooked at eleven o'clock and it was now five. We had drifted or been pulled into the main channel, where strong currents and a choppy sea made the matter a pretty serious and uncomfortable one.

  Here I expended all I had left in a short and furious struggle to bring the fish up, if not to gaff, at least so we could see what he looked like. How strange and unfathomable a feeling this mystery of him gave rise to! If I could only see him once, then he could get away and welcome. Captain Dan, in anticipation of a need of much elbow room in that cockpit, ordered my brother and the ladies to go into the cabin or up on top. And they all scrambled up and lay flat on the deck-roof, with their heads over, watching me. They had to hold on some, too. In fact, they were having the time of their lives.

  My supreme effort brought the fish within the hundredth foot length of line--then my hands and my back refused any more.

  "Dan, here's the great chance you've always hankered for!" I said. "Now let's see you pull him right in!"

  And I passed him the rod and got up. Dan took it with the pleased expression of a child suddenly and wonderfully come into possession of a long-unattainable toy. Captain Dan was going to pull that fish right up to the boat. He was! Now Dan is big--he weighs two hundred; he has arms and hands like the limbs of a Vulcan. Perhaps Dan had every reason to believe he would pull the fish right up to the boat. But somehow I knew that he would not.

  My fish, perhaps feeling a new and different and mightier hand at the rod, showed how he liked it by a magnificent rush--the greatest of the whole fight--and he took about five hundred feet of line.

  Dan's expression changed as if by magic.

  "Steer the boat! Port! Port!" he yelled.

  Probably I could not run a boat right with perfectly fresh and well hands, and with my lacerated and stinging ones I surely made a mess of it. This brought language from my boatman--well, to say the least, quite disrespectable. Fortunately, however, I got the boat around and we ran down on the fish. Dan, working with long, powerful sweeps of the rod, got the line back and the fish close. The game began to look great to me. All along I had guessed this fish to be a wonder; and now I knew it.

  Hauling him clos
e that way angered him. He made another rush, long and savage. The line smoked off that reel. Dan's expression was one of utmost gratification to me. A boatman at last cornered--tied up to a whale of a fish!

  Somewhere out there a couple of hundred yards the big fish came up and roared on the surface. I saw only circling wake and waves like those behind a speedy motor-boat. But Dan let out a strange shout, and up above the girls screamed, and brother Rome yelled murder or something. I gathered that he had a camera.

  "Steady up there!" I called out. "If you fall overboard it's good night!... For we want this fish!"

  I had all I could do. Dan would order me to steer this way and that--to throw out the clutch--to throw it in. Still I was able to keep track of events. This fish made nineteen rushes in the succeeding half-hour.

  Never for an instant did Captain Dan let up. Assuredly during that time he spent more force on the fish than I had in six hours.

  The sea was bad, the boat was rolling, the cockpit was inches deep under water many a time. I was hard put to it to stay at my post; and what saved the watchers above could not be explained by me.

  "Mebbe I can hold him now--a little," called Dan once, as he got the hundred-foot mark over the reel. "Strap the harness on me!"

  I fastened the straps round Dan's broad shoulders. His shirt was as wet as if he had fallen overboard. Maybe some of that wet was spray. His face was purple, his big arms bulging, and he whistled as he breathed.

  "Good-by, Dan. This will be a fitting end for a boatman," I said, cheerfully, as I dove back to the wheel.

  At six o'clock our fish was going strong and Dan was tiring fast. He had, of course, worked too desperately hard.

  Meanwhile the sun sank and the sea went down. All the west was gold and red, with the towers of Church Rock spiring the horizon. A flock of gulls were circling low, perhaps over a school of tuna. The white cottages of Avalon looked mere specks on the dark island.

  Captain Dan had the swordfish within a hundred feet of the boat and was able to hold him. This seemed hopeful. It looked now just a matter of a little more time. But Dan needed a rest.

  I suggested that my brother come down and take a hand in the final round, which I frankly confessed was liable to be hell.

  [Illustration: FOUR MARLIN SWORDFISH IN ONE DAY]

  [Illustration: A BIG SAILFISH BREAKING WATER]

  "Not on your life!" was the prompt reply. "I want to begin on a little swordfish!... Why, that--that fish hasn't waked up yet!"

  And I was bound to confess there seemed to me to be a good deal of sense in what he said.

  "Dan, I'll take the rod--rest you a bit--so you can finish him," I offered.

  The half-hour Dan recorded as my further work on this fish will always be a dark and poignant blank in my fishing experience. When it was over twilight had come and the fish was rolling and circling perhaps fifty yards from the boat.

  Here Dan took the rod again, and with the harness on and fresh gloves went at the fish in grim determination.

  Suddenly the moon sailed out from behind a fog-bank and the sea was transformed. It was as beautiful as it was lucky for us.

  By Herculean effort Dan brought the swordfish close. If any angler doubts the strength of a twenty-four thread line his experience is still young. That line was a rope, yet it sang like a banjo string.

  Leaning over the side, with two pairs of gloves on, I caught the double line, and as I pulled and Dan reeled the fish came up nearer. But I could not see him. Then I reached the leader and held on as for dear life.

  "I've got the leader!" I yelled. "Hurry, Dan!"

  Dan dropped the rod and reached for his gaff. But he had neglected to unhook the rod from the harness, and as the fish lunged and tore the leader away from me there came near to being disaster. However, Dan got straightened out and anchored in the chair and began to haul away again.

  It appeared we had the fish almost done, but he was so big that a mere movement of his tail irresistibly drew out the line.

  Then the tip of the rod broke off short just even with the splints and it slid down the line out of sight. Dan lowered the rod so most of the strain would come on the reel, and now he held like grim death.

  "Dan, if we don't make any more mistakes we'll get that fish!" I declared.

  The sea was almost calm now, and moon-blanched so that we could plainly see the line. Despite Dan's efforts, the swordfish slowly ran off a hundred feet more of line. Dan groaned. But I yelled with sheer exultation. For, standing up on the gunwale, I saw the swordfish. He had come up. He was phosphorescent--a long gleam of silver--and he rolled in the unmistakable manner of a fish nearly beaten.

  Suddenly he headed for the boat. It was a strange motion. I was surprised--then frightened. Dan reeled in rapidly. The streak of white gleamed closer and closer. It was like white fire--a long, savage, pointed shape.

  "Look! Look!" I yelled to those above. "Don't miss it!... Oh, great!"

  "He's charging the boat!" hoarsely shouted Dan.

  "He's all in!" yelled my brother.

  I jumped into the cockpit and leaned over the gunwale beside the rod.

  Then I grasped the line, letting it slip through my hands. Dan wound in with fierce energy. I felt the end of the double line go by me, and at this I let out another shout to warn Dan. Then I had the end of the leader--a good strong grip--and, looking down, I saw the clear silver outline of the hugest fish I had ever seen short of shark or whale. He made a beautiful, wild, frightful sight. He rolled on his back.

  Roundbill or broadbill, he had an enormous length of sword.

  "Come, Dan--we've got him!" I panted.

  Dan could not, dare not get up then.

  The situation was perilous. I saw how Dan clutched the reel, with his big thumbs biting into the line. I did my best. My sight failed me for an instant. But the fish pulled the leader through my hands. My brother leaped down to help--alas, too late!

  "Let go, Dan! Give him line!"

  But Dan was past that. Afterward he said his grip was locked. He held, and not another foot did the swordfish get. Again I leaned over the gunwale. I saw him--a monster--pale, wavering. His tail had an enormous spread. I could no longer see his sword. Almost he was ready to give up.

  Partly from curiosity and partly from idleness, I went into the lecturing room, which M. Waldman entered shortly after. This professor was very unlike his colleague. He appeared about fifty years of age, but with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence; a few grey hairs covered his temples, but those at the back of his head were nearly black. His person was short but remarkably erect and his voice the sweetest I had ever heard. He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing with fervour the names of the most distinguished discoverers. He then took a cursory view of the present state of the science and explained many of its elementary terms. After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget: "The ancient teachers of this science," said he, "promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows."

  Nine hours!

  Chapter V

  SAILFISH--THE ATLANTIC BROTHER TO THE PACIFIC SWORDFISH

  In the winter of 1916 I persuaded Captain Sam Johnson, otherwise famous as Horse-mackerel Sam, of Seabright, New Jersey, to go to Long Key with me and see if
the two of us as a team could not outwit those illusive and strange sailfish of the Gulf Stream.

  Sam and I have had many adventures going down to sea. At Seabright we used to launch a Seabright skiff in the gray gloom of early morning and shoot the surf, and return shoreward in the afternoon to ride a great swell clear till it broke on the sand. When I think of Sam I think of tuna--those torpedoes of the ocean. I have caught many tuna with Sam, and hooked big ones, but these giants are still roving the blue deeps.

  Once I hooked a tuna off Sandy Hook, out in the channel, and as I was playing him the Lusitania bore down the channel. Like a mountain she loomed over us. I felt like an atom looking up and up. Passengers waved down to us as the tuna bent my rod. The great ship passed on in a seething roar--passed on to her tragic fate. We rode the heavy swells she lifted--and my tuna got away.

  Sam Johnson is from Norway. His ancestors lived by fishing. Sam knows and loves the sea. He has been a sailor before the mast, but he is more fisherman than sailor. He is a stalwart man, with an iron, stern, weather-beaten face and keen blue eyes, and he has an arm like the branch of an oak. For many years he has been a market fisherman at Seabright, where on off days he pursued the horse-mackerel for the fun of it, and which earned him his name. Better than any man I ever met Sam knows the sea; he knows fish, he knows boats and engines. And I have reached a time in my experience of fishing where I want that kind of a boatman.

  * *

  Sam and I went after sailfish at Long Key and we got them. But I do not consider the experience conclusive. If it had not been for my hard-earned knowledge of the Pacific swordfish, and for Sam's keenness on the sea, we would not have been so fortunate. We established the record, but, what is more important, we showed what magnificent sport is possible. This advent added much to the attractiveness of Long Key for me. And Long Key was attractive enough before.