70 Fish Stories 



beaks giving them a savage appearance. I found that they 

 preyed at times on very young fishes, creeping up to them 

 with the cleverness of the stealthy barracuda, then suddenly 

 shooting ahead to seize the game, which became a gleaming, 

 scintillating atom of silver in their jaws. 



The gars are slow of motion, and when hard pressed, take 

 to the air and wriggle away by a convulsive movement of the 

 tail. By using a very small fly hook and a diminutive sar- 

 dine bait, I lured the gars, often of fair size. The moment 

 they were hooked, up into the air they went, and standing 

 almost erect, walked — there was no other term for it — away 

 over the smooth water, literally standing on the tail which 

 was whirled furiously about ; then when the line would stop 

 the extraordinary rush, the gar would drop, but almost im- 

 mediately go into the air again, true to its instinct. 



These gars were not over a foot in length, and often, when 

 wading over the reef, and lifting the coral to examine its 

 roots for cyprseas — the beautiful spotted cowries of com- 

 merce, here called micramocks — I would alarm a school of 

 these fishes by throwing down the coral, and they would 

 dart out of the water, and go ricochetting wildly away on 

 their tails, in every direction. None of them ever struck me, 

 though even so small a fish, with its long pointed bill, could, 

 doubtless, make a painful wound. It is well known that the 

 large and powerful garfish or Long Tom of the South 

 Pacific has inflicted fatal injuries by impaling native shell 

 hunters, the victims being literally shot by the living arrows. 

 In the Florida waters, indeed, there are huge garfishes as 

 large as the South Sea species, which might be dangerous 

 neighbors if caught walking through the air. 



Once in Samoa the writer of these lines had his man Taua 

 throw a stick of dynamite at a school of great gars. One 

 of these leaped out of the water, seizing the stick as it fell. 

 The air was filled with the green bones and greener flesh of 

 this gar; and of its six feet of length, we recovered less 

 than a foot — ^the tip of its tail, the tremendously strong 



