TARPON-FISHING. 215 



we captured weighed one hundred and fifty pounds, and measured 

 six feet six inches in length. It may be there are larger ones, but 

 if so the writer has not met them. In colour it is pearly steel on 

 the back, but the sides are the most lustrous silver. The scales 

 are two inches in breadth on the large fish, and are pure silver as a 

 pearl, and are frequently used as ornaments. Sometimes they are 

 drilled and sewed on to a belt, making a conspicuous girdle of 

 studded silver. The beauty of the animal is its vigour and power 

 in the water, and the daring leaps it makes when hooked, accom- 

 panying each leap with a shaking motion, which sooner or later 

 throws the hook out of its mouth. 



While we were slowly drifting, my paddler had baited a hook 

 attached to a cord-like codfish line and it was trolling behind us, 

 but he caught nothing. Tired of holding it in his hand, he wound 

 it around one of the thwarts of the boat. Presently the line payed 

 out rapidly. Before it could be thrown off the thwart it drew taut 

 and snapped with the sound of a fiddle-string. The negro seized 

 the line, and hauling it in came to the frayed end, he looked at his 

 broken line and then across the water the way the fish had gone, 

 and said with the most melancholy air " Dun gone." An instant 

 after, the fish, with the broken line still attached, leaped twice 

 from the water, it seemed a mile away shaking itself to free 

 the hook, and then we saw it no more. A few moments later 

 my paddler called " Da he 's hook em," and I saw Poke's canoe 

 going to sea, as if impelled by a submarine screw. The boatman 

 held his paddle firmly in the water for a rudder, and the line, where 

 it came out of the water, cut a furrow of spray. A moment later 

 the fish broke water with a rush. It jumped five feet clear of the 

 surface, and the wire snell attached to the hook rattled as the fish 

 shook himself in the air. It fell back with a splash, the line still 

 held, and the race began again. Three times in quick succession 

 it came out of the sea, and once turned a somersault. Then it too 

 was free, and the idle line came in with a broken hook. 



" Have you seen anything of those Hebrew children ?" I called. 

 No answer. Poke was thinking of his sins. I felt sorry for him, 

 and said no more. We fished with varying fortune all the day. 

 Sometimes we had a channel- bass, a most lively and merry leaper, 



