TOPE AND OTHEE LEAPING SHAEKS 



often fasten her to a bed of coral, and bait up the sharks on the 

 edge of a blue channel. Then -with a big steel hook and chain, 

 a line of strong but not large mamUa rope, we would take our 

 choice of the sharks. The lure was a big grouper, and when a 

 shark had taken it, he was hooked with a wrench that brought 

 a response that would have jerked a man overboard had he 

 held on. Nothing is quite hke the rush of a thousand-pound 

 shark, and we stood awhile and watched the coil fly into the 

 "air, the man in the stern turning the boat in the direction the 

 shark was supposed to be going. Then when the end came, 

 there was a quick grasp for it, a few seconds of terrific struggling 

 to stay in, then the boat would get under way and the race was 

 on. 



I had a little run-way for the line in the bow, a very im- 

 portant feature in shark fishing, and the end of the line was 

 fastened to the centre of a board, or sometimes to a tin can, 

 which, t£ worst came to worst, we could throw over ; and I have 

 often done this to save a capsize. The shock would, by a sudden 

 jerk, tear the rope from the cutwater, get it over the side, until the 

 water began to pour in, when we would toss the can over. This 

 generally occurred a mile or two from the start, and as we knew 

 half a dozen sharks were following the other, we took no chances. 



I was frequently towed by sharks so large that we never 

 stopped them, or never saw them. The moment we held the 

 Une or rope, they broke it. There is nothing quite Mke this 

 rough and tumble game, iE one hkes that sort of sport, is young 

 and full of fight. The fierce reaches, the violent efforts to get 

 the boat around, the rushes to windward on the turns, the sudden 

 slack away of the line as the shark came in, the moments of 

 dire uncertainty as to which way it would start or go, the fever- 

 ish anxiety as to whether he was really off were all delightful and 

 strenuous. I could, as a rule, handle a fourteen-foot shark 

 weighing eight hundred to a thousand pounds (estimated) after 

 it had towed us a mile or more. At least by that time, we could, 

 by working hard, pxdl the boat up over the fish and bring it up, 



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