Big Game at Sea 



patience. Lofty rocks, mountains climbing up into 

 the clouds, deep canons winding away filled with 

 sweet-scented verdure; picturesque rocks rising like 

 castles, and in the water, deep waving forests of kelp, 

 the hanging gardens of the sea. All about the water 

 was so clear, so perfectly smooth, that it seemed to 

 be a disk of steel reaching away to the edge of the 

 world, and sea and sky blending so perfectly that, 

 were it not for the caps of high mountains eleven 

 thousand or twelve thousand feet in the air in the 

 distant Sierra Madre, one could not have told where 

 earth began and sky ended. We sat perhaps twenty 

 minutes, waiting, then I felt something nibbling on 

 the line, the very antipodes of what might have been 

 expected from the huge fish. In fact, having fished 

 the Mexican Gulf for tarpon where a thousand ani- 

 mals prey upon bait, I might have fancied the inevi- 

 table crab was nibbling on the lure. But Joe shook 

 his head, touched the line, and whispered hoarsely 

 and dramatically, " jewfish, sure," and at that exact 

 moment the line began to stiffen and to run slowly out. 



" Let him have ten feet," said our boatman. 



Have you ever tried to count one, two, three as a 

 big shark was slowly running off with your line? 

 Your heart is bounding away ahead of your counting; 

 in a word, it is a nerve-wracking period, as there is a 

 subtle something which comes up the line, which 

 thrills you, and sets the nerves tingling, and then the 

 ten feet have been eaten up by this mysterious thing 



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