A Glorious Haul 327 



lead was cast and gave us sixty-five fathoms, sand and 

 shell bottom. The skipper, being a great fisherman, 

 produced a line, and baiting the hooks with a piece of 

 fresh beef (we were only three days out from Auckland) 

 dropped them overboard. The moment it touched 

 bottom he began to haul up in the greatest state of 

 excitement, calling at the same time for any and 

 everybody who had any suitable fishing tackle to get 

 to work fishing. At which there was a great rush, 

 intensified when the skipper pantingly hauled on 

 board two magnificent fish of a kind I have never seen 

 before or since. They were like a glorified perch, 

 superbly coloured and weighing over twenty pounds 

 each. The mate, who had his line down next, ex- 

 ultingly hauled up a pair of Kauwhai, the huge New 

 Zealand mullet, of about ten pounds each. And then 

 all hands except two joined in the fun. 



Such a variety of fish I never saw at one time. 

 There were all the well-known New Zealand favourites 

 except the barracouta and the rock cod. Snapper, 

 cavalle, groper, the last a monster with a mouth like 

 the opening of a coal sack, but in all other respects 

 like a huge cod, except that he had big scales and 

 a cod has small ones. Yellow-tail there were and 

 trumpeter, and at least as many more species of 

 whose names I have not the least idea. We were 

 becalmed for about three hours and we caught at 

 least ten hundredweight of fish in a shallow area of 

 certainly not more than a square mile in extent, 

 which was the summit of a mountain that rose 

 almost sheer from the sea bed for over thirty 

 thousand feet. 



The event was a fruitful topic of conversation 

 among us all the rest of that voyage, for none of us 

 had ever known of the like before, and we could not 



