148 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



right one, Betty and I were bidden to throw over 

 the spoons and to let out what seemed to me like 

 several miles of line, and I was breathlessly em- 

 barked on my first fishing trip. 



To begin by being breathless was a great mis- 

 take ; I needed more breath than was available long 

 before we finished. There is such a thing as a 

 science in fishing, everyone asserts, so my very 

 brief experience must be misleading. There are 

 many strange things about the Galapagos, con- 

 ditions that seem topsy-turvy to us, and the fishing 

 must share in this abnormality, for the sport of 

 angling in these waters seems to me to be mostly 

 an endurance contest, in which the fisherman sinks 

 from exhaustion or his boat sinks from the weight 

 of victims, not to his skill and cunning, but to the 

 mere fact that he can exert a few pounds more pull 

 on his end of the line than they can on theirs. The 

 real test of skill here would be to prevent the fish 

 from biting. My idea of fishing as a sport, solely 

 gained from one afternoon in Gardner Bay, is as 

 follows ; you throw over a large, wicked hook, which 

 has an uncanny aptitude for turning and rending 

 you, and a shiny, cm'ved piece of tin; you unreel 

 a lot of fine, and wait thirty seconds. Your arm is 

 then jerked out of its socket, which you take as a 

 hint that a fish insists on fighting it out on this line 

 if it takes all winter. Your tutor in the gentle art 

 of angling then stops the motor, which saves you 

 from being dismembered. You start to pull in the 

 hne, the fish registering violent disapproval and 

 arguing all the way. The line is extremely harsh, 



