TALES OF FISHES 



a million things. Once when a Mexican tigre, a 

 jaguar, charged me I — But that is not this story. 

 Boschen has the temperament for a great fisherman. 

 He is phlegmatic. All day — and day after day — ^he 

 sits there, on trigger, so to speak, waiting for the 

 strike that will come. He is so constituted that it 

 does not matter to him how soon or how late the 

 strike comes. To me the wait, the suspense, grew 

 to be maddening. Yet I stuck it out, and in this I 

 claim a victory, of which I am prouder than I am 

 of the record that gave me more swordfish to my 

 credit than any other fisherman has taken. 



On the next day, August 11th, about three o'clock, 

 I saw a long, moving shadow back of my bait. I 

 jumped up. There was the purple, drifting shape of 

 a swordfish. I felt a slight vibration when he hit 

 the bait with his sword. Then he took the bait. 

 I hooked this swordfish. He leaped eight times 

 before he started out to sea. He took us three 

 miles. In an hour and five minutes I brought him 

 to gaff — a small fish. Captain Dan would take no 

 chances of losing him. He risked much when he 

 grasped the waving sword with his right hand, and 

 with the gaff in his left he hauled the swordfish 

 aboard and let him slide down into the cockpit. 

 For Captain Dan it was no less an overcoming of 

 obstinate difficulty than for me. He was as elated 

 as I, but I forgot the past long, long siege, while he 

 remembered it. 



That swordfish certainly looked a tiger of the sea. 

 He had purple fins, long, graceful, sharp; purple 

 stripes on a background of dark, mottled bronze 

 green; mother-of-pearl tint fading into the green; 



36 



