88 THE STORY OF FISH LIFE. 



ward movements, the sword remains fixed and is 

 eventually broken off in the struggle for freedom. 

 Frank Buckland reminds us that in the Museum 

 of the College of Surgeons is a section of the 

 bow of a whaler impaled by one of these swords. 

 That portion of the sword which remains is a 

 foot long and five inches in circumference. " At 

 one single blow," he writes, " the fish had plunged 

 his sword through, and completely transfixed 

 thirteen and a half inches of solid timber. The 

 sword had of course broken off and prevented a 

 dangerous leak in the ship. In the British 

 Museum is a second specimen of a ship's side 

 with the sword of a sword-fish fixed in it, and 

 which has penetrated no less than twenty-two 

 inches into the timber. When his Majesty's 

 ship Leopard was repairing in 1795, after her 

 return from the coast of Guinea, a sword of one 

 of these fishes was found to have gone through 

 the sheathing one inch, next through a three-inch 

 plank, and beyond that four and a half inches 

 into the firm timber ; and it was the opinion of 

 the mechanics that it would require nine strokes 

 of a twenty-five-pound hammer to drive a bolt of 

 similar size and form into the same depth into 

 the same hulk ; yet this was accomplished by a 

 single thrust of the fish." Mr Lydekker reminds 

 us that there are instances on record of bathers 

 having been transfixed by these fish, one such 

 instance occurring in the estuary of the Severn 

 about the year 1830. The normal use of this 

 sword is for the capture of food. Cod and other 

 fish being spitted thereon, but how they are 

 removed from the sword still remains a mystery. 



