128 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



the water. I came all this way to catch leaping 

 tarpon, not to be towed about at the pleasure of 

 grisly sharks, and, caring little now whether the line 

 breaks or holds, I suddenly alter my tactics and 

 give our friend's jaw a wrench that tickles him and 

 makes him pull fifty yards off the reel. He is 

 tiring, though, and I succeed in getting line back 

 on the reel even to the 45-ft. mark ; ten feet more ; 

 the water is clear, and we should soon get a sight 

 of him. We do. Underhill and I have been 

 craning our necks over the side, and we simul- 

 taneously draw back with exclamations more or 

 less profane (his more, mine less) as we see im- 

 mediately below us the blurred outline of an 

 enormous fish, distorted by refraction to the image 

 of something far longer than the boat which it 

 has hauled through miles of water. Why so 

 immense a creature does not run out the whole of 

 my 200 yards of water and then go on its way, this 

 is a mystery, or rather would be did I not know 

 the cowardly nature of these ocean bullies. They 

 know not their strength and submit to coercion 

 rather than show fight. Is this not equally true of 

 many animals of both land and water ? Do we not 

 see the sparrow chase the hawk, the gull drive the 

 gannet? When Benjamin Franklin called the 

 vaunted American eagle a "lousy coward "(I quote 

 him from memory, but this was the purport of his 

 criticism), he knew what he was talking about, and 

 it is a pity that his nation did not rather take for 

 its emblem the splendid buffalo, then equally 

 characteristic of its landscape and as symbolical of 

 liberty until the greed of man made offal of its 

 herbs. 



