FISHING THE PACIFIC 



ranks among the largest I've ever seen was stone dead in 

 thousands of fathoms of water some 25 miles off Cabo 

 Blanco. I pulled myself out of the chair as one usually does, 

 whether successful or not, put a couple of towels around my 

 neck, dried myself off and sat down on deck to examine my 

 hands as we headed back to port. We arrived at the mole 

 around 10: 30 and Dick Norris, God bless him, had waited up 

 to see if I was all right. In fact he was just about ready to start 

 out looking for me. However, from on top of the hill back 

 of Cabo Blanco at El Alto he had been able to see our run- 

 nings lights as we came in. He examined my hands, gave 

 me a bowl of soup at his house, then drove me to the hospital. 

 I remember there was a very good-looking Peruvian nurse on 

 hand and the doctor was excellent. He told me that my little 

 finger was broken and he thought that my right hand was, too. 

 At any rate, he bound it up so tightly that I could not move 

 it and on the drive back to Talara, 32 miles, I cut the 

 bandage off and left my little finger as it was. It had been 

 broken before while I was playing hockey and I was not much 

 concerned about it. My one thought was to get out fishing 

 again on the morrow. 



The next morning I drove back up to Cabo Blanco and 

 much to my chagrin found that some of the struts in the boat 

 had been severely strained and the motors were in very bad 

 shape. Five hours of backing into these seas had been too 

 much for the craft which was a trifle small for such a big 

 fish in the weather that we had battled. However, I thought 

 that perhaps we could go the next day or the following one. 

 After waiting around for six days we were afraid to use the 

 boat any more for fear of damaging her further. Eventually 



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