MY FKIIIT WITH THE DFA'ILFlSll 



221 



quite as hadly as I wanted to kill that 

 great fish, for it was fully twenty-four 

 feet in width and must luive weighed 

 not less than twelve thousand j)ounds. 

 1 was uncertain however, as to its gender, 

 and a female was absolutely neeessary, 

 also I had only fifteen hundred i)ounds of 

 plaster of Paris — not enough to cast 

 such a huge beast; but the principal 

 drawback was that we could not tow- 

 such a monster with the little launch and 

 there was no other i)oat in sight. 



For more than two liours 1 mo\ed 

 among those six Mania, making obser- 

 vations ^ and hoping that some other 

 boat would appear, to lielp me tow the 

 carcass of the big one, but none came 

 and finally I decided to kill the first that 

 we ran into. 



She was now swimming on or near the 

 surface with mate following, almost 

 touching her all the time, and, with all 

 ready, we moved to the attack. As she 

 was passing, quartering across our bow, 

 I gave the word, ('harlie and I drove 

 our harpoons deep into her broad l^ack; 

 then, Avith a great splash of her tins, she 

 plunged below and ahead. As the 

 drogue was snatched imder, it threw 

 water high in the air and the shock was 

 so great that it brought the great ray 

 to the surface in that aw'kward, wheeling, 

 edgewise leap that Mania make, after 

 the manner of a wheel turning over. 

 Before its tail had reached the perpendic- 

 ular, I and all of my crew saw an eml)ryo, 

 folded in cylindrical form, thrown high 

 in the air, and I heard Captain Jack 

 exclaim, " Did you see that? The young 

 one has a tail longer than the old one! " 

 The embryo quickly imfolded its fins and, 

 catching the air horizontallv, its descent 



' Mr. Coles' observations on the life history and 

 habits of the great devilfish (Man'.a biroslris) together 

 ViiUi some comparisons with its lesser relative (Mobula 

 otfersi) are about to be published in the American 

 Museum Bulletin, together with a more technical paper 

 on the same subject by Dr. L. Hussakof of the Museum. 



was retarded until after the mother fish 

 had disappeared beneath the surface. 



When I had hurled my harpoon and 

 reached behind me, the spade lance had 

 l)een instantly placed in my hand, but 

 as 1 saw this embryo feel)ly flapping on 

 the surface, I passed back the spade 

 lance and _\elled "Give me an iron, 

 quick I " (the harpoon is always called an 

 iron) and while not five seconds were 

 taken in the exchange, that was too long, 

 for as I threw back my hand to strike, 

 the male swept the embryo beneath the 

 surface with one of its fins. 



I passed back the harpoon and seized 

 the spade lance, as I saw the wounded 

 female, now on the surface, charging 

 down on us at highest speed. I was 

 forced to strike instantly and there was 

 not sufficient time to clear up the line 

 attached to the lance handle, so the 

 point of the spade lance was slightly de- 

 flected, with the result that the fatal 

 spot was missed by a few inches. How- 

 ever, the force of the l)low, which was 

 delivered with both hands W'ithout re- 

 leasing the handle, was so great, that it 

 depressed the creature's head, and the 

 head-on collision ditl not crash in the 

 side of the boat as it probably w^ould 

 have done otherwise. The top of the 

 head struck the bottom of the boat, 

 breaking the lance handle short off 

 against the side, and I was confronted 

 with a very serious defect in m^^ equip- 

 ment. 1 had acquirefl, by years of w^ork 

 with the lance, such confidence in my 

 ability to place it where I desired that I 

 had not thought it necessary to provide 

 more than one spade lance; but now my 

 fish was very much alive and fighting 

 mad and I was without a spade lance. 



With this gone the danger was much 

 increased, as the fight had to be carried 

 on with the old-fashioned whale lance, 

 which I had had made with the shank 

 only three feet long instead of five or six 



