BIG GAME FISHES OF CALIFORNIA 



fishes — rays, sharks, and smaller fry — especially at night, when 

 the sea was a mass of phosphorescent light. 



Occasionally along the barrier, in deep blue water, over a 

 resplendent garden of waving plumes of yellow and lavender, 

 swam a big cousin of the Santa Catalina swordfish. We called 

 it the Cuban swordfish. It ranged up to five hundred pounds' 

 weight, and was as gallant and swaggering a cavalier of these 

 summer seas as one could find. There was a little channel 

 through the barrier, and one day, when the gulf was a disc 

 of steel, I pushed with a companion through this, and was 

 soon floating over the gardens of gorgonias and sea-plumes. 

 The days when the sea was perfectly smooth seemed to have 

 an attraction for sharks and swordfish, as they came to the sur- 

 face, apparently to bask in the sun, their tall dorsals and tail 

 fins being seen here and there as they swam up and down this 

 rialto of the fishes. 



We were drifting and fishing for the beautiful little yellow- 

 tails of the reef, when suddenly the dorsal of a Cuban swordfish 

 came in sight not fifty feet away. On it came, its fins cutting 

 the water like a knife, nearer and nearer, until it was not ten 

 feet from us, and the big blue shape could be distinctly seen. 

 The temptation was too great, and, seizing the long slender grain 

 pole that was always in readiness, I stood up and, as the big 

 fish swam by, paying not the slightest attention to us, I threw 

 the spear into it. The swordfish sprang forward, rising out 

 of the water several feet, and fell with a crash that deluged us 

 with spray and spume, then dashed for deep water, tearing the 

 line from the coil and making my negro boatman perform a 



177 M 



