A Sportsman 343 



small insurance money would have been paid out 

 to guarantee his gracing the ship's deck. 



The ropes were run over blocks, andthe hoisting 

 commenced on both ropes. The weight was so ex- 

 cessive, with over a dozen of the crew on the hauls, 

 that the captain thought it expedient to make a sure 

 thing of it by bending a noose around the shark's 

 tail. This was done, and over the three blocks 

 the sailors pulled merrily on the ropes. The shark 

 had almost reached the height of the bulwarks when 

 it was observed that the hook, hauling too heavily 

 upon the shark's mouth, was tearing out. It did. 

 The additional strain upon the great harpoon hook 

 began to straighten it out, and finally it came out 

 entirely. Fortunately, we had the noose rope on 

 the tail. Fortunate, indeed; when horrors ! that 

 began to slip; and, a shark's tail not being of that 

 cross-cut variety which the tunas and the blackfish 

 have, slowly oozed through the noose, and our shark 

 made a header into the green sea, from which he 

 never appeared to our view again. 



Moral: Don't count your fish until they are 

 strung or creeled; and then you may not be sure of 

 them, as a visiting chap at the Rangeleys last year 

 found when returning from a brook at twilight with 

 a creel full of fish. Passing through a path in the 

 woods, he heard a noise behind him, and saw a huge 

 bear rising up on his hind feet. Suspecting the 

 cause, he hastily threw down his basket, and legged 

 with good speed away, finding the next morning 

 only his torn-up empty basket and nothing else. 



Among all the salmon I caught off Monterey, I 

 never saw one that appeared in thin flesh: all plump 



