GLADIATORS OF THE SEA. 341 



Although sword-fish are so plentiful in American waters, they are 

 never seen of less than three feet in extreme length. Old fishermen 

 who have taken and dressed them by the hundreds state that they 

 have never found any traces of spawn in them. The absence of young 

 fish and spawning females would indicate that they do not breed on 

 our coast. In the Mediterranean the young are so plentiful as to be 

 a common article of food. The appearance of the young fish when 

 about an inch and a half long is shown in Fig. 3. 



Menhaden, mackerel, bonitoes, blue-fish, and other species which 

 swim in close schools, are the usual food of the sword-fish. A school 

 of small fish has been seen crowded together near the surface, when 

 their enemy appeared rising through the dense mass, and half out of 

 water, and literally fell upon them with the sword and slew them in 

 large numbers. Menhaden have been found floating which have been 

 cut nearly in two by a blow of the sword. It is in pursuit of these fish 

 that the sword-fish come to our Northern Atlantic shores in the sum- 

 mer months. The sword-fishery season opens in the neighborhood of 

 Sandy Hook about the first of June ; the fish are very abundant about 

 Block Island and Nantucket in July and August, disappearing with 

 the first cold weather in October. They are, like mackerel, at first 

 very poor and lean, but as the season advances they grow fatter. For 

 many years from three to six thousand have been taken annually on the 

 New England coast, and there are no signs of any decrease or increase 

 in their numbers. It is not unusual for twenty-five or more to be seen 

 in the course of a single day's cruising, and sometimes as many as this 

 are in sight from the mast-head at one time. One Gloucester schooner, 

 the Midnight, Captain Alfred Wixon, took fourteen in one day, in 

 1877, on George's Banks. 



The apparatus ordinarily employed for the capture of the sword- 

 fish is a harpoon with a detachable head. The pole is of hard wood, 

 fifteen or sixteen feet in length, and from an inch and a half to two 

 inches in diameter. To this is fastened an iron rod or shank, about two 

 feet long and five eighths of an inch in diameter, and having a deep 

 socket into which the pole sets. Upon the end of the shank fits some- 

 what securely the head of the harpoon, known to the fishermen by the 

 names " sword-fish iron," " lily-iron," and " Indian dart." The lily-iron 

 consists of a two-pointed piece of metal, having a socket running 

 lengthwise on one side at the middle. In this is inserted the end of 

 the harpoon-shank, and to it or near it is attached also the harpoon-line. 

 When the iron has been plunged point first into the body of the fish, 

 it is released by the withdrawal of the pole from the socket, and, by 

 the pull of the line attached at its middle, is at once turned crosswise 

 to the opening through which it entered, and is thus prevented from 

 withdrawal. 



The fish are always harpooned from the end of the bowsprit of a 

 sailing-vessel. All vessels regularly engaged in this fishery are sup- 



