262 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



And then even the strongest line will sometimes break, or a 

 shark swim off with what you had already considered your own. 

 And yet, if you yourself were dead out of luck, and had been so 

 for days and days together, and others seemed to you to get far 

 more than their share of sport, the battle fought by them and 

 their tarpon was very amusing to watch, and certainly far less 

 fatiguing than fighting a fish yourself. It was very interesting 

 also to look at the huge pelicans fishing morning and evening, 

 as they swooped down on to their prey from a height and gobbled 

 the captured fish into their capacious pouch, their meal being 

 often disputed by some very precocious gulls. Turtle, too 

 the large yellow " loggerhead" were very numerous; they 

 frequently rose to the top to breathe, floated for a while on 

 the surface, had a good look round with their large dark eyes, 

 and disappeared ; porpoises rolled lazily along ; grotesque 

 whiprays flopped out of the water like some huge bat, and now 

 and then a beautiful kingfish shot some 10 or 12 feet and 

 more into the air, apparently in pursuit of a small fish, which in 

 reality he had knocked out of the water in his lightning rush. 



In calm, warm weather sometimes tarpon came in with the 

 tide in hundreds, the sea literally seemed alive with them, all 

 playing about and tumbling over one another on top of the 

 waves, in the bright sunlight a really glorious sight, their 

 metallic green and blue back contrasting sharply with the 

 polished silver on their side. The sea was full of them, but not 

 one would look at bait or hook ; the fish were not feeding, only 

 at boisterous play. Their meals are taken in the depths below, 

 and there must the bait be invitingly displayed, for nowhere else 

 will they look at it. Well, I had landed eleven and was very 

 desirous of completing the dozen ; time was getting short and 

 strikes had lately become scarcer and scarcer. My best day had 

 produced three tarpon, one of which took me over to the other 

 shore of the Boca, a mile away at least, where it was landed 

 after a long fight ; he weighed 111 Ibs. by measurement. This 

 measuring gives the weight within a pound or two as was many 

 a time proved, the formula being : Square the girth, multiply 

 by the length in inches, and divide by 800. 



The second fish on that day rushed at the bait from below, 

 carried it up to the surface, and knocked the oar out of my 

 boatman's hand. At first I thought there was nothing on the 



