Big Game at Sea 



destroyed the solemnity of the occasion when the 

 visitors asked if there was anything in the barren 

 shanty with which to garb the deceased, by producing 

 from beneath the bed, a huge hoop skirt of the 

 fashion of the sixties. He held it out with both 

 hands and burst into tears, the first display of emo- 

 tion I ever saw him make. 



When I fell in with Robert Bunsby, another of this 

 remarkable quartette, he was an old man with a 

 decided list to port, due, he said, to rheumatism. 

 When I last saw Bunsby he stood on the beach after 

 a terrible hurricane, with wreckage piled high about 

 him. Our sixty-ton schooner had gone to pieces the 

 night before, and her timber strewed the sand, while 

 our small racing and fishing boat was ground into 

 such small pieces that in hours of search the old 

 man could find but her name in copper letters which 

 he held, while down his red and deep-lined cheeks 

 genuine tears found their way. Wrecker, fisher- 

 man, boatman, genial good-natured Bunsby, as faith- 

 ful companion as man ever had ! 



Many a night when he and I sat on the beach of 

 some key watching for the big turtles to come in did 

 he unfold some wonderful and impossible romance of 

 his life, which he firmly believed. Though old and 

 stiff, he insisted on being my companion on the various 

 exciting sailing races we held, and here his one weak- 

 ness came to the surface he had all a sailor's horror 

 of sharks, and was in constant fear of capsizing; in 



222 



