Big Game at Sea 



downward, and drop into the sea. Scores of such 

 leaps could be seen all about. I saw a tuna miss 

 a flying-fish but strike it so violently that it was sent 

 whirling like a pin-wheel twenty feet upward. I had 

 been told by cool and veracious observers that they 

 had seen the tuna grasp the fish in mid-air. I never 

 have seen this, but almost every other catastrophe 

 that could befall the game I witnessed during this 

 remarkable scene when fishes were maddened by the 

 lust for blood, and the prey so terrified that they 

 crowded about the launch, clung to the bottom, ut- 

 terly and completely demoralized by the fierceness of 

 the onslaught of the ferocious tunas. The air seemed 

 to be filled with soaring fishes. They came over the 

 boat. I turned my head aside to avoid being struck, 

 and watched the stony hypnotic eye of the flier as it 

 moved on never swerving from right to left to avoid 

 me. I saw them strike the boat and fall dead, to 

 be seized by the tuna, and saw flying-fishes moving 

 along a foot above the surface, and just below, canted 

 to an angle of 45 degrees the dark green form of the 

 giant tuna, a nemesis that rarely failed to seize the 

 victim. 



So fascinating was this feature of the cunning of 

 the leaper that I stood in the center of the ground 

 and lofty tumbling and watched the slaughter of the 

 flying-fishes, fully expecting that a tuna would land 

 in my boat, yet so fascinated that I disregarded what 

 was really a menace; a leaping fish would have gone 



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