The Fish that Won't Keep 209 



capable of modifying to any appreciable extent its 

 malignant salinity. 



The Bonito is, if anything, still worse. Mourn- 

 fully do I remember how, having a field day among 

 Bonito just on the northern side of the Equator in 

 the Atlantic, homeward bound in a very slow ship, 

 the steward proposed that, as the weather was quite 

 cool, he should be allowed to salt about thirty fine 

 fish, or in the neighbourhood of four hundred pounds 

 weight, so that our miserable rations of putrid beef 

 and pork might be eked out in a little more Christian 

 fashion. The idea was jumped at, and I, having 

 considerable experience in cleaning fish, spent my 

 watch below eviscerating and boning the fish ready 

 for the pickle. 



The job was eminently successful, not a trace of 

 taint appearing in the pickled fish. In high glee we 

 welcomed the first mess of salted Bonito, but alas, 

 we were most cruelly disappointed. Hungry sailors 

 can eat almost anything, but that terrible fish was 

 beyond us. It scarified the mouth as the eating of 

 pure salt would do, all trace of fish as far as flavour 

 was concerned seemed to have fled, and yet it had 

 been steeped all night and parboiled in two waters. 

 Various schemes were tried, such as soaking it in 

 vinegar, drying the salt out of it in the sun (when it 

 became like a piece of alabaster), but all to no purpose. 

 And most tantalising of all, it retained a singularly 

 appetising smell. The whole mass was dumped over- 

 board, much to the gratification, no doubt, of a school 

 of sharks, which was following us. But even they, 

 I should think, must have wondered what the new 

 and strange food was which they had gulped down 

 so readily, if, as is somewhat doubtful, the shark has 

 any discrimination in matters of taste at all. 



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