THE SWORDFISH 209 



cent colors which have tested the descriptive powers of so 

 many voyagers. 



This is the terror and destroyer of the flying fish. The 

 "Dolphin" pursues it with tremendous speed and persever- 

 ance, often taking long leaps out of the water, until the vic- 

 tim is exhausted, overtaken and devoured. 



The colors of the "Dolphin" are a mixture of all the colors 

 of the solar spectrum, revealed with the metallic lustre and 

 iridescence of the opal and the reticulated python. The fully 

 grown fish is from 5 to 6 feet in length, and in contrast with 

 the ordinary sailing-vessel diet of salt meat its flesh is a 

 delicacy. To the writer it was a red-letter day when with 

 a new artificial flying fish, fresh from the horny hand of 

 an old sailor named "Porpoise George," he caught his first 

 "Dolphin," in mid-ocean, from the deck of the Golden 

 Fleece. 



The Swordfish 1 needs neither preface nor introduction, 

 for his sword serves all such purposes. 



In the Government museum at Singapore is a three-inch- 

 thick section of copper-sheathed oak plank, cut from the 

 side of a ship, which has sticking through it the sword of a 

 Swordfish. Now, the material of such a sword is by no 

 means so hard that it could by ordinary means be forced 

 through three inches of the hardest kind of oak planking 

 sheathed with copper. The fact of clean penetration implies 

 a speed of not less than sixty miles per hour, and perhaps 

 more. With such locomotive powers, and such a weapon 

 for slaughter, it is fortunate that its owner has not been 



1 Xiph'i-as glad'i-us. The pronunciation of the generic name is Zif'e-as. 



