Big Game at Sea 



This and other cries came from my companion 

 as the big fish went flying up the reef; now in the 

 air, now sliding along the surface with a tremendous 

 lateral bound, again in a graceful plunge into the 

 very empyrean, and other gyrations that one would 

 deem impossible in so large a fish. 



Sometimes it appeared to be dancing wildly on 

 its tail, and then in a frenzy of rage would remain 

 on the surface and beat the water with lusty blows 

 from side to side that could be heard a long distance 

 with the wind. For six hundred feet up along the 

 sandy bay I walked, waded, and ran, having crossed 

 the little shoal from Bush Key, and here played the 

 splendid fish to a finish and kept it leaping and jump- 

 ing until I had it in shoal water, when the boy 

 grained it in default of the gaff, and hauled it, shin- 

 ing, gleaming, onto the sand. 



If you have never seen a sabalo, imagine the M d- 

 iterranean sardine that you take from the box for 

 lunch lengthened out to six or seven feet ; give it two 

 enormous black staring eyes, a supercilious lip of the 

 most grotesque shape imaginable coming down and 

 twisting up again, a mouth that can be thrown so 

 wide open that thirty feet distant, when the fish is in 

 the air, you can see blue sky down its throat and out 

 through the arched gills; give the fish a greenish 

 back and a long spine at the dorsal, a powerful 

 sardine-like tail, and equip its belly and sides with 

 scales which look more like newly minted dollars than 



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