272 The Mackerel 



and devoured. Or, when hurling itself against the 

 hull of some becalmed ship, it falls, with skull shattered 

 to fragments against the steel, by the force of that 

 tremendous impact. That this is no freak of the 

 imagination may be proved by an examination of the 

 sword of a Xiphias shown in the Natural History 

 Museum of London, which is driven eighteen inches 

 through solid oak planking and beam. It needs 

 little calculation to show what the effect upon the 

 fish would have been had that ship been of steel instead 

 of oak. And there is very little doubt that such an 

 occurrence is common enough, one of the few ways 

 in which the sword-fish comes by his end, except 

 by reason of his failing powers. Then, indeed, the 

 scavengers of the deep, swift to note the waning forces 

 of their great enemy, make a determined onslaught 

 upon him and save him the misery of a lingering old 

 age. This latter, it may be remarked, seldom falls to 

 the lot of any deep-sea citizen. Even an aged cachalot, 

 we may assume, is not allowed to die of senile decay, 



A pleasant little member of the mackerel family, 

 called the Pomfret or Brama, has always been an 

 especial favourite of mine. The peculiarity about 

 them is that they only make their appearance near 

 a vessel in a calm. In the profoundest solitudes 

 and depths of ocean these essentially sociable little 

 fish, having suddenly been materialised as it were 

 out of the surrounding apparently vacant blue, will 

 presently be discovered clinging closely to the side 

 of the ship, generally about the run and around the 

 rudder. They will occasionally venture alongside 

 as far as the bow, if the ship be making no headway 

 at all and the sea be like glass, but they exhibit the 

 utmost unwillingness to leave the side of the ship 

 for a single moment. 



