Big Game at Sea 



feet in length, like gigantic comets; others, in white 

 and pink, were mere disks, while countless minute 

 forms filled the water of this bay, famed for its wealth 

 of life of strange and incongruous diversity. Huge 

 black spots here and there told of schools of ancho- 

 vies, and up through them occasionally came forty 

 or fifty-foot sulphur bottom whales, while over the 

 sea flew countless flocks of sea pigeons, also preying 

 upon them, covering the green waters for acres; and 

 when they rose with a rippling roar, like the beating 

 of a thousand waves, the air was filled with the 

 disagreeable musky odor ; not so disagreeable perhaps 

 as the odor of the whale which filled the air with 

 spray just to the windward. 



The eye of the angler is constantly regaled with 

 marvelous sights in this paradise of animal life. 



The boatman has turned to the east, and we are 

 going in shore before the big swells which are coming 

 from nowhere and growing larger and larger. I see 

 a big long-tailed gull chasing the sea pigeons, forcing 

 them to stand and deliver, and then, the rod bends 

 and the big reel is a witness to its own undoing; no 

 salmon this. I could stop this silver king of Mon- 

 terey in a few seconds, but this is another matter. 

 It rips the line off by the yard, literally makes things 

 sing, and a fine leather spray rises about the thumb 

 brake. Away and down it goes, while the reel sings. 

 an acclaim of its own ; down deep into the canon, that 

 is supposed to be beneath us, then up, rising in a long, 



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