INCIDENTS IN TUNA FISHING 59 



refuse to accept, — the tuna towing a twenty-foot 

 launch by four hundred and fifty feet or more of 

 twenty-one-strand Kne. It seems impossible. 



During this rush the boat had gone four or five 

 hundred feet offshore, and now it remained to gain 

 line. The rod was raised quickly, and four feet was 

 reeled in as rapidly as the hand would move. Again 

 and again was this repeated; again and again there 

 would come a splendid rush, and all the line gained 

 would slip away into the sea, and the work had to 

 be gone over again. Moments slipped by, and in an 

 hour's time the fish has towed us an estimated four 

 miles up the island and offshore, and doubtless intended 

 to make for the deeper water of the channel. At the 

 end of two hours I had the tuna within two hundred 

 feet of the boat, during which it had never ceased its 

 boring and plunging tactics that nearly paralyzed my 

 left side and arms, and took away all feeling from the 

 thumb, always playing on the brake. About this time 

 I decided to force the fighting, and gained fifty feet 

 in short order, when I saw that the fish was rising, 

 and the rod had a tremulous motion. Up it came 

 until two hundred feet away the tuna struck the sur- 

 face, lashed the water a moment, then turned and 

 shot around in a great half-circle to plunge down again. 

 Again I forced it up, when it turned and played a 

 splendid manoeuvre entirely on the surface. About 

 two hundred feet away it turned and came at me like a 

 mad bull. If a swordfish had made the move it would 

 have been uncomfortable; as it was, I leaped to my 

 feet, stood one foot on the rail, and reeled rapidly. It 

 was beyond human possibihty to reel in the slack. 

 The vision of that splendid charge was entrancing. 



