130 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



skiff containing my American ally shoots out on the 

 other. His " gun " at full cock, swings pleasantly 

 to and fro across my face. The sudden arrival of 

 reinforcements apparently urges the shark to one 

 last exhibition of its strength, and it does what it 

 might have done much sooner and without half the 

 risk. It smashes my rod-tip as I should break a 

 match. Bang goes the revolver, and bang, bang 

 again, as its owner discharges it at the water, but 

 without harming the slowly sinking fish, though the 

 second bullet must have severed my wire snell, as 

 it came back in a coil to the broken tip. As luck 

 would have it, the harpoon, which we had taken out 

 on several occasions in fruitless search for a saw- 

 fish, was left behind that day, so we had to gaze 

 helpless at the exhausted form of the shark, lying 

 in the full blaze of a sun that left no secrets in such 

 shallow water, and to leave the grisly tyrant to 

 recover and thereafter to terrorise the coral under- 

 world of Boca Grande. 



As soon as the curtain has rung down on this 

 fishy drama, I repair to the shadow of the light- 

 house, there *to find condolence, sand-flies and a 

 repast the reverse of Amphytrionic, one in which 

 appetite does not come with eating. Even the 

 "Anheuser Busch " is tepid compared with the 

 delicious draught of rain-water from a great butt 

 beside the keeper's house. Two of the party have 

 gone to lunch on the houseboat, and their tardy reap- 

 pearance, an hour after the rest of us are afloat for the 

 afternoon tide, suggests several rubbers of uncon- 

 fessed bridge. Your true Englishman will have his 

 bridge, even if he goes five thousand miles to play it 

 in sight of the alligators that bask among the Keys. 



