TALES OF FISHES 



Captain Dan complied and we all watched. We 

 all saw an enormous colorful body loom up, take 

 the shape of a fish, come back of R. C.'s bait, hit it 

 and take it. 



"By George!" breathed R. C, tensely. His line 

 slowly slipped out a little, then stopped. 



"He's let go," said my brother. 



"There's another one," cried Dan. 



With that I saw what appeared to be another 

 swordfish, deeper down, moving slowly. This one 

 also looked huge to me. He was right under the 

 teasers. It dawned upon me that he must have an 

 eye on them, so I began to pull them in. 



As they came in the purple shadow seemed to 

 rise. It was a swordfish and he resembled a gun- 

 boat with purple outriggers. Slowly he came on- 

 ward and upward, a wonderful sight. 



"Wind your bait in!" I yelled to R. C. 



Suddenly Dan became like a jumping-jack. 

 "He's got your hook," he shouted to my brother. 

 "He's had it all the time." 



The swordfish swam now right under the stem 

 of the boat so that I could look down upon him. 

 He was deep down, but not too deep to look huge. 

 Then I saw R. C.'s leader in his mouth. He had 

 swallowed the flying-fish bait and had followed us 

 for the teasers. The fact was stunning. R. C, 

 who had been winding in, soon found out that his 

 line went straight down. He felt the fish. Then 

 with all his might he jerked to hook that swordfish. 



Just then, for an instant my mind refused to work 

 swiftly. It was locked round some sense of awful 

 expectancy. I remembered my camera in my 



210 



