FLORIDA AND THE WEST INDIES 125 



sportsman sitting on the stern pulls a long face, and 

 it transpires that just as he was getting his fish, 

 "a nailer," to the beach in a state borderina on 



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exhaustion, a great shark tore it off the hook. 



And now I am once more fast to a tarpon, 

 nothing of great size, but at any rate firmly hooked. 

 Up he comes, then plunges wildly down the Pass. 

 Up he comes again, also without avail, shaking his 

 massive head like a bulldog worrying a bone, then 

 dashes straight for my boat. Underbill pulls madly 

 for the shore as I reel in the slack, but the tarpon 

 is too well hooked for such tricks to serve him. 

 There is another jump, after which, braced perhaps 

 by the fresh air, he gets another twenty or thirty 

 yards off the reel, and Underbill rests on his oars so 

 as not to throw too heavy a strain on the line. 

 These medium-sized tarpon always give you a 

 better fight than the heavy fish, a distinction that I 

 have also noted in bass and other fish at home. 

 We are near the beach now, and one other boat is 

 pushing off, leaving a gleaming tarpon high and 

 dry on the sand, and another is aground on the 

 shallows, its occupant playing a fine fish, while the 

 coloured guide hops to and fro, the great gaff ever 

 poised for the stroke, but again and again eluded 

 by the tarpon's frantic dash for deeper water. Our 

 own keel grates on the sand, and Underbill is over 

 the side and at the first thrust manages to drag 

 out of mischief a tarpon that looks about 80 lbs. 



On our way back to the fishing we pass the 

 Colonel, smiling grimly under his broad-brimmed 

 "dolly varden," his rod bending like a reed, his 

 line running out like the line of a rocket going to a 

 foundering ship. Up it comes for a last jump, and 



