250 THE SALT OF MY LIFE 



is not intended as a reflection on the absent, 

 breakfasting member of the party. He and John 

 had other fish to fry. 



With this recital of my third, and, for the time 

 being, last, attempt to catch tunny, it seems 

 desirable to offer a word or two of remark on the 

 general prospects of others succeeding where we 

 failed. If success comes out of failure, then failure 

 is not all regret. This is the kind of platitude that 

 one might preach as a funeral oration over a 

 partridge killed by contact with a telegraph wire, 

 only one knows to a moral certainty that in the 

 next gale another bird will in all probability 

 fall dead on the same spot . In angling, however, 

 it is different, or at any rate would be if anglers 

 were as circumstantial over their failures as they 

 are over their successes, if they would tell us of 

 the black-edged, as well as of the red-letter, days. 



That tunny of the largest class (Rabilhe) will 

 ever be caught on the rod of Funchal, as tuna 

 are caught off Avalon, is at present uncertain. 

 The conditions of depth alone are so different, and 

 the average sea so rough for small boats, that the 

 chance of success looks remote. There are, how- 

 ever, two smaller kinds of tunny, or at any rate 

 of fishes so closely allied as to go by the same 

 generic name. These are known in the vernacular 

 as Patudos and A voador ; and whereas the Rabilhe 

 weigh anything up to 400 Ibs., the former of these 



