The Groupers 219 
of joy of the angler at the supreme moment of 
vantage gained; and so it is worse than useless 
to argue with the man who does not care for 
angling; he cannot understand that the angler 
is, aS a rule, born, not bred. 
One cannot philosophize with a wild unknown, 
battering and hammering at your arms, plunging, 
then rising to the surface with convulsive bound 
to turn and plunge again. There is a “second 
wind ” in sea angling, and if the fish secures it, it 
is a sorry day for the fisherman, and seeing that 
the fish must be fought without cessation, I 
played it, hauling and giving with all my power, 
and in a few moments had the pleasure of sight- 
ing a magnificent fish at the surface, where it 
turned and beat the blue water into foam, tossed 
the Portuguese men-of-war into pearly fragments, 
and ground up scores of delicate jellyfishes 
which swarmed the warm waters of the Gulf. I 
held the game while Chief cleverly inserted his 
big gaff-hook beneath the head, and we held the 
monster hard and fast and rested our eyes upon 
the beauties of the black grouper, Garrupa nz- 
grita, which, when towed in and hauled upon the 
beach at Long Key, was estimated to weigh three 
hundred and fifty pounds. 
