CHAPTER XV 



THE DUEL 



A'lEAVY ground swell was piling in from the 

 west, lifting the glazed turquoise sea in mys- 

 terious ridges and furrows, gigantic pulse 

 beats beginning in no-man's land somewhere to the 

 west and ending in sheets of foamy spume that leaped 

 up the steep slopes of the precipitous Santa Catalina 

 cliffs, which, painted in red, blue, mauve, yellow, 

 green and vermilion, cast strange and indescribable 

 reflections upon the restless waters. 



A great mass of pinnacled rock bearing a vague 

 figure of a lion couchant, guarded this region to the 

 south, and around it beneath the water grew the 

 marine forest of Nereocystis that waved and bent in 

 strange serpentine convolutions with the erratic ebb- 

 ing and flowing of the tide. 



Out beyond the outer kelp bed one might have seen 

 on the crest of a swell the long slender figure of a 



NOTE. The habits of the swordfish are but little known. It is an oceanic roamer 

 and as yet but one breeding ground where the young are found is known, the Med- 

 iterranean. This is a chapter from the history of a swordfish, the incidents 

 being taken from actual happenings which the author has either observed, or has 

 obtained from acquaintances who did see them j hence so far as it goes the history 

 may be relied upon as authentic, though made up from the life histories of several 

 individuals. 



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