CHAPTER XVII 



NILE ANGLING 



FISH we partly depended upon for our commissariat ; 

 but having more insistent duties ourselves, we largely 

 left the angling to Mahomed Maghazi and Abdul Hamil 

 who caught a daily supply. The best of their captures 

 was a fish that, at superficial glance, somewhat resembled 

 a cod, and these averaged some 10 or 12 Ib. apiece, though 

 Mahomed constantly averred that he had hooked and 

 lost others of colossal dimensions. That is, of course, 

 the unvarying tale of the angler ; but in Mahomed's case 

 it was undoubtedly true. These fish were the " Bayard" 

 of Sir Samuel Baker who, in his Nile Tributaries (p. 214) 

 mentions having frequently seen them up to 60 or 70 Ib. 

 weight. 



I had brought out a rod specially for the "big-game 

 fishing" on the Red Sea (described later) a stiff harling- 

 rod by Farlow, only some 7 feet long, with an enormous 

 wooden winch that held 200 yards of line. We had 

 brought it with us up the Nile, and that rod lay constantly 

 fishing by itself on the 'midship deck. One morning just 

 as we were going ashore at dawn, the reel gave forth a 

 startled shriek that indicated "something big" at the far 

 end. A few moments' observation of what followed served 

 to explain Mahomed's previous failures with these Nilotic 

 monsters. Our good dragoman, having seized the rod, 

 held its point directed straight as a rifle-barrel towards 

 the game ; thus allowing the captive at its own sweet will 

 to take out as much line as it fancied without effort or 



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