SAILPISH — THE ATLANTIC BROTHER TO THE PACIFIC 

 SWORDFISH 



IN the winter of 1916 I persuaded Captain Sam 

 Johnson, otherwise famous as Horse-mackerel 

 Sam, of Seabright, New Jersey, to go to Long Key 

 with me and see if the two of us as a team could 

 not outwit those illusive and strange sailfish of the 

 Gulf Stream. 



Sam and I have had many adventures going down 

 to sea. At Seabright we used to launch a Seabright 

 skiff in the gray gloom of early morning and shoot 

 the surf, and return shoreward in the afternoon to 

 ride a great swell clear till it broke on the sand. 

 When I think of Sam I think of tuna — ^those tor- 

 pedoes of the ocean. I have caught many tuna with 

 Sam, and hooked big ones, but these giants are still 

 roving the blue deeps. Once I hooked a tuna off 

 Sandy Hook, out in the channel, and as I was play- 

 ing him the Lusitania bore down the channel. Like 

 a mountain she loomed over us. I felt like an atom 

 looking up and up. Passengers waved down to us 

 as the tuna bent my rod. The great ship passed 

 on in a seething roar — ^passed on to her tragic fate. 

 We rode the heavy swells she lifted — and my tuna 

 got away. 



72 



