CHAPTER XXVI 

 THE SILVER KING 



' Toward the sea turning my troubled eye 

 I saw the fish (if fish I may it cleepe), 

 That makes the sea before his face to flye, 

 And with his fiaggie fins doth seeme to sweepe 

 The foamie waves out of the dreadful deep.' 



Edmund Spencer, The Visions of the World, 1591. 



AMONG the angling experiences which have made the greatest 

 impression upon me is my attempt to photograph a tarpon. 

 It appeared to be a very simple operation when studjdng the 

 beautiful photographs taken by Dimock and others, but possibly 

 these are taken when the tarpon is held on a short hand-hue not 

 far from the boat, and given no chance, while the photographer 

 sits in another boat directly opposite, and snaps the agile silver 

 Mug as he goes, mad and terrified, into the air. I have a photo- 

 graph, taken, I fancy, in this manner, in which the tarpon's 

 mouth and gills are open so wide that I can see the coimtry 

 through them, 



I tried none of this ; expert photography is too much for me, 

 the subjects in all my pictures are without feet or heads, or have 

 a dazed appearance, so I generally employ a professional. But 

 this time I attempted to photograph my own tarpon. 



It was at Tarpon, Port Aransas, Texas, before the days of the 

 Tarpon Club, which made me an honorary member, I think, 

 for my sMIl in photographing clouds. I fished this pass in 

 August, the best season, when the water was aJive at times with 

 tarpon rolling over and puffing at the surface. My boatman 

 was Mateo Brugen, an Austrian, a character who had decided ideas 

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