Big Game at Sea 



shook it in every fiber and muscle. But the whale did 

 not leap or shrink; it moved stolidly on, and the 

 swordsman found himself being towed, hard and fast, 

 unable to move, held by the unknown. No soft 

 blubber this; no jellyfish to cut down with a single 

 sweep, but some terrible mechanical force that swept 

 on and on, eternally on. The swordfish was partly 

 stunned by the shock, but quickly recovered and 

 whirled its body about back and forth, up and down 

 in frantic endeavor to escape; then something gave 

 way, a wrenching, tearing, deadly shock, and it swam 

 away, out of balance, impotent, the most timid and 

 helpless thing in all that great sea, a swordfish with- 

 out a sword; its weapon had broken short off.* 



A few months later the ship Fortune made port, 

 and on the log was seen by the curious that on the 

 1 4th of June, while under full sail and off bottom, the 

 ship suddenly received a shock from an unknown 

 cause. When the ship was docked and unloaded, a 

 long and powerful sword was found penetrating her 

 side. It had passed through the copper, through six 

 inches of oak, through a foot of soft wood and sev- 

 eral partitions, the tip entering a barrel of oil, not a 

 drop of which escaped. The case attracted wide- 

 spread attention, and the sword was cut out and 

 placed with the section of timber in a museum, where 

 it stands an effective monument for this swashbuckler 

 of the sea, that soon paid the penalty of its disposition 



* From the Smithsonian records made by Prof. G. Brown Goode. 

 2 44 



