The Wit of the Wild 

 r 



Then the labor of the engines drowned the spat , 

 spat, spat, of the myriad of restless little tails strug- 

 gling to swim out of their strange prison, while I 

 climbed to the masthead to talk with the grizzly 

 old lookout, who had been round Cape Horn 

 thirteen times, yet did not think himself much of 

 a traveler. 



That day we caught 250,000 fish and made a 

 round trip of a hundred miles, going away outside 

 of Montauk Point, where it was frightfully rough 

 after a two days' easterly gale. Pyramids and 

 ridges of water, huge and irresistible, green as 

 liquid malachite, traveled in turbulent haste to 

 magnificent destruction on the beach, where sun- 

 lit clouds of spray were floating dense and high, 

 and the roar of the surf came grandly to our ears 

 wherever we went, Yet the difficulties were none 

 too great for these hardy fishermen, who balanced 

 themselves in their cockleshells, and rose and 

 sank with the huge billows, without losing their 

 hold upon the seines, or permitting a single 

 wretched bunker to escape. 



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