224 SAVAGE SUDAN 



resistance. Meanwhile the supreme object of every 

 man-jack on board was concentrated on frantic efforts 

 to seize hold of the line somewhere beyond the rod point ! 

 Some sought to effect this insanity with boat-hooks, 

 others by wading, a third lot were getting the pinnace 

 away. The function of a rod as a factor in killing fish 

 was wholly ignored. 



I therefore took the rod from Mahomed and ordering 

 all hands to stand clear, reeled in the slack and brought 

 pressure to bear. On feeling itself held, the fish responded 

 at once with a straight-away burst of 80 yards, terminating 

 in a mighty "flowse" on the surface. Two other fairly 

 determined runs followed, but neither so far nor so fast 

 as the first, and after that there was twenty minutes' 

 hardish fighting ere any visible sign indicated the approach 

 of the climax. Then with intense interest we watched to 

 see what manner of monster we were tackling. By sundry 

 head-and-tail "breaks" we had judged the fish to be well 

 nigh two yards long. Despite that foreknowledge, it was 

 nevertheless a somewhat startling vision when a huge flat 

 head appeared alongside a ghost -like object in the 

 opaque water with long tentacles streaming away astern, 

 recalling Sir Samuel Baker's simile of "a cross between 

 a sponging-bath and a waggon-wheel ! " 



By means of a big iron hook that we had brought out 

 with the view of catching crocodiles, the played-out silurus 

 was gaffed and lifted aboard. Although its head was 

 broad and flat, with a gash-like mouth, yet the body, aft 

 of the shoulders, was upright, not unlike a giant conger- 

 eel, and fringed above and below with continuous fins. 

 This fish weighed 45 Ib. and measured a trifle under 5 feet 

 in length. Subsequently we caught several others even 

 bigger, the two heaviest scaling 48 and 55 Ib. 



Our crew held that these fish were uneatable and their 

 dictum we accepted untested. There was something 

 repulsive about their appearance and their musky smell. 

 The bait used was a lump of raw meat. This silurus, 



