FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 207 



lyzed the fight from the motion pictures, we 

 reahzed that luck had surely been with us, for if 

 the great fish had slapped its wing tips a little 

 nearer and higher, the rowboat and devilfishers 

 would have been flattened. When once a harpoon 

 was deeply fastened to the fish, the battle became 

 merely a question of trying to tire it out, and to 

 hope that the injury inflicted by the hail of bullets 

 would antedate the effect of their accumulating 

 weight ! 



Something at last was effective and after two 

 hours the devilfish surrendered and was towed to 

 the Arcturus. Several lashings were broken be- 

 fore it was at last drawn out of the water and 

 lowered on the deck (Fig. 30). Here was a speci- 

 men indeed, not to be placed on the stage of the 

 microscope, but studied by walking around, over 

 and almost into, for its gaping mouth was quite 

 four feet wide. From fin tip to fin tip it measured 

 exactly eighteen feet, and little by little as we cut 

 it up we weighed the pieces and found it to total 

 two thousand, three hundred and ten pounds. The 

 liver alone weighed as much as a man, and we found 

 a young devilfish about to be born, — a lusty infant 

 weighing twenty-eight pounds and with a fin spread 

 of over three and a half feet. As usual the fish had 

 many interesting parasites. I took eight sucking 

 fish from its gills and at least thirty more fell off 

 when it left the water. On the skin were many 

 weird-looking parasitic crustaceans. 



These great fish are not especially wary and a 

 few days before when returning from a diving ex- 



