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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



devilfish to close quarters as soon after 

 harpooning it as possible, and to this end 

 I designed a drogue ^ of the same shape 

 as that used by whalers, only it had to be 

 large enough to stop the first rush of the 

 harpooned fish. Knowing that there 

 were certain parts of the bofly where the 

 flesh was so filled with connective tissue 

 that a harpoon could not draw out, I 

 made my harpoon line only forty feet 

 long and attached to it a drogue more 

 than three times as large as the largest 

 I have known to be used on whales. 

 I also carried a ^•ery powerful repeating 

 rifle and a large shoulder whale gun, from 

 which either a harpoon, or a bomb lance 

 containing half a pound of powder, can 

 be fired; but many years of handling 

 harpoon and hand lance have given me 

 confidence in these and I have never 

 used either rifle or whale gun in killing 

 devilfish. Several extra harpoons and 

 whale lances, and two extra drogues were 

 carried; but I did not expect ever to have 

 occasion to strike more than one blow 

 with the spade lance, so I carried only 

 one of these. To guard still further 

 against any possible miscalculation I 

 took on both my Mania expeditions 

 the man who had been my captain for 

 ten years, Charlie Willis, of Morehead 

 City, North Carolina. The plan is that 

 the instant that I throw the harpoon 

 with drogue attached, he shall throw an- 

 other harpoon with half a mile of rope 



' A drogue is a device for offering the greatest possi- 

 ble resistaiire to a pull. That used by Mr. Coles con- 

 sists of two pieces of plank, eighteen inches long and 

 nine inches wide, placed side by side and nailed firmly 

 to two similar pieces placed beneath them with the joint 

 running at right angles to that in the two above. A 

 bole about threi; inches square is cut in the middle of 

 the planks and a heavy piece of timber fits into it 

 exactly on one side, being joined on the other side to a 

 thicker piece of timber which forms a shoulder against 

 the boards. A rope with heavy knot at the end is 

 passed through both pieces of timber, the knot holding 

 the rope at the end of the thicker limber, the other end 

 of the rope being attached to the harpoon; the great 

 resistance of this drogue as it is dragged through the 

 water, wrenches the harpoon so severely when the fish 

 rushes that the animal is brought up short. 



attached. The second harpoon however, 

 has never pro\-ed necessary, as the drogue 

 has always stopped the rush of the fish. 



Following these preliminaries, my first 

 expedition for Mania, in the sunnner of 

 1914, was successful in that it secured 

 the only two specimens of Mania that 

 were located; but neither of these was as 

 large a specimen as I wished to obtain, 

 and as both were males the scientific 

 data they yielded was incomplete. I 

 determined to return to the southwest 

 coast of Florida and secure a female 

 Mania, fifteen or more feet wide, for the 

 American ]\luseum of Natural History. 



My second expedition was equipped 

 more completely than the first. On my 

 arri^■al on the Florida coast, however, on 

 March 28, 1915, I encountered very un- 

 favorable weather, and it was not until 

 April 6 that I saw and killed a Mania in 

 a hot eight-minute fight near Blind Pass. 

 Upon towing it to the beach I found it 

 to be a male about thirteen feet in diame- 

 ter, and after securing parts of the fish I 

 left it. We had only run a short distance 

 after this before I saw a dark coloration 

 on the water caused by a Mania coming 

 toward the boat. It was fully fifteen 

 feet below the surface, but the two har- 

 poons reached it and the great ray came 

 to the surface with a rush that broke 

 both harpoon handles short off against 

 the bottom of the boat. The boat was 

 knocked clear of the water, but as it was 

 falling back, I placed the spade lance 

 just at the back of the brain, and with a 

 last harsh bellow the fish died, within a 

 few seconds after the harpoon first struck 

 it. This fish, however, also proved to 

 be a male, and it was not until April 11 

 that I got the female devilfish over eigh- 

 teen feet wide that I had long been 

 planning for. 



The killing of my first four Mania was 

 attended with much sport, some danger, 

 and lots of blood, but everv detail worked 



