CHAPTER XI 
THE JACK 
“But why, good fisherman, 
Am I thought meet for you, that never yet 
Had angling rod cast towards me ?” 
— Moll Cutpurse (1611). 
Lonc Joun, Bob Rand, Paublo, and Chief, the 
Seminole, all clever with the grains at long range, 
and with the cast-line, were the authorities at 
Garden Key, on the Florida reef, and as I un- 
folded a rod one evening in their rangy quarters, 
and announced that I was going to fish with 
it, they looked at me in such undisguised amaze- 
ment that I assumed that a piece of “ machinery ” 
of the kind had never before been seen on the 
key of the gulf. In the summer months par- 
ticularly, the various channels of the reef were 
the favorite haunts of the jack (Caranx hippos), 
one of the gamiest fishes that swims the South- 
ern seas. 
The keys dotted the blue gulf like emeralds; 
masses of green bay cedar encircled with white 
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