The Annals of the Porch Club 169 



" A mere nothing," said B , waving fame aside. 



" The most remarkable thing, gentlemen," continued the 

 General, *' the one which impressed me most, was the action 

 of a vast school of tunas, bonitos, dolphins and deep sea 

 minnows. They, of course, thought the soup was chum, 

 and as they dashed into it, wild with excitement, they be- 

 came surrounded with burning oil and were cooked upon the 

 instant, and when the fire was entirely extinguished both of 

 us, B.'s launch and my own, were so surrounded, and packed 

 in, by a great stratum of fish fried in oil, that the propellors 

 would not move, and here we are indebted to you, Com- 

 modore," said the General. "If you had not come by, and 

 loosened us up, we should have been there yet. He literally 

 dug us out," he explained to the group of listeners, " by 

 hauling away the dead fish, making a channel or lane into 

 it. How long was that channel, Commodore ? " 



" Not more than an eighth of a mile," he replied ; " a 

 mere nothing. You heard me when I hailed from the out- 

 side rim? " 



" I did," answered the General. 



" Pardon me," said the listening poet and literary man 

 from the East, *' but that's the most extraordinary incident 

 I have ever heard of. Would you mind my making a note 

 of it ; jot it down, you know ? " 



" Not at all," replied the General, thinking of Pickwick ; 

 " give you a dozen more like it if you wish." 



" Eh, a dozen more ! But I would like to ask one ques- 

 tion. Did you ever see the fish that you hooked ? " 



" No, I did not," said the General cautiously, " but a 

 timber schooner reported at San Diego that they ran into 

 a big tuna floating ofif the Coronados not long after, and, in 

 trying to haul it alongside, it fell in pieces, as though it had 

 been cooked, and they estimated that it was something like 

 twenty feet long." 



One hears some odd tales at Avalon (is it not here that 

 fish stories are created?) and among the boatmen are some 



