TEE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 263 



tion, the head of the jib-boom ; method, pay out as much line 

 as the wind would waft, say fifty or sixty yards, and with skill- 

 ful play skip the shining lure in long flights from wave to 

 wave, as the ship dashes on her course. Now, with a thou- 

 sand or more albicore, some forty or fifty pounds in weight, 

 gleaming in a sea rivaling the blue of the sky, we await a 

 rise ; the fly skips twenty feet at a flight ; a great albicore 

 breaks for it, and with splendid leap falls a few feet short 

 of the hook. As you hope for a supper, don't be tempted 

 to humor his disappointment and slack your motion to wait 

 for him ! if you do, he will turn from the passive fly ; but, 

 rather, by a vigorous jerk, send the hook ten feet in the sun- 

 light, and fifty feet forward, and your sure prize will fall a 

 few inches short of taking it in the air. Do your prettiest 

 to keep the bait in swiftest motion and away from him, with 

 splash, dash, and a flying leap. He will be under it when it 

 just tips a lifting wave, and the hook will be deep buried 

 in his throat. And what a strike it is ! The ship is speed- 

 ing onward through the crested waves, carrying a " bone of 

 foam in her teeth." You are swaying on the spar, thir- 

 ty feet above the swift current, and your prize, with the 

 strength and vim, and triple the leap of salmon, at the full 

 run of your line, is tugging, and glancing in and out of the 

 water, and giving you full-handed play for the next half- 

 hour. With hands armored in horn, case-hardened by oar 

 and rope-haul, you may hang on without the running-lines 

 cutting to the bone. Fathom by fathom you gain line; 

 yard by yard you lose. Hope and fear, hard work and royal 

 sport, until, amidst the shouts of the excited lookers-on, you 

 toss a gleaming mass of blue and silver on the deck weigh- 

 ing, perhaps, sixty-four pounds. And all hands and the 

 cook may help themselves to the dry, chippy flesh you h'ave 

 taken. The breast is passable, but the rest is generally 

 thrown to the sharks. This is a portrait. 



