230 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



breeze from the southward. On the run in, we 

 acquired the only two trophies of the day, a turtle, 

 which one of the men picked off the surface of 

 the sea, where it lay basking in chelonian luxury, 

 and a wreck-fish weighing about a pound. The 

 latter was swimming after the boat, three or four 

 feet below the surface, and one of the crew actually 

 contrived to gaff it in that position. Those who 

 are skilful with the gaff, as well as gillies gener- 

 ally, will appreciate the difficulty of gaffing so 

 small a fish so far below the top of the water and 

 from a boat sailing at any rate four knots an hour. 

 The turtle was of the hawksbill kind, common 

 enough in the Atlantic and reducible to very 

 palatable soup, though not the equal of the 

 aldermanic favourite. Two small crabs (Planes 

 minutus\ evidently parasitic, clung to its tail. 

 These I put in spirit and the turtle I managed to 

 convey alive to the Zoo a month later, in company 

 with a second, of smaller dimensions, which I 

 purchased alive in the Funchal market for the 

 ruinous sum of sixpence. Thus ended our first 

 failure, and so easily does the angling tempera- 

 ment veer between the clouds and the pit that 

 we now doubted (with more reason perhaps than 

 we suspected at the time) whether we should 

 ever hook a tunny, much less ever kill one. There 

 are men in every walk of life who, so to speak, 

 set out with a flourish to catch tunny and succeed 



