220 Fish Stories 



human attributes of certain animals ; of one so sensitive, so 

 proud, so high of spirit, that it committed suicide rather 

 than be caught and tamed, and our game doubtless belonged 

 to this class as it seemed bent on suicide, rushing on and 

 on to certain destruction. 



Presently it was on the swell and Manuel cried, " He go 

 on the reef ; cut away, cut ! " But I had not had my arms 

 jerked and nearly pulled out for half an hour to cut away, 

 so, being in command, I refused, told my sculler to attend 

 to his part of the affair and keep the dinghy after the fish. 

 I heard him mumbling and kicking off his shoes, and the 

 next moment I saw the swordfish, its great fin entirely out 

 of water, on the half-submerged rocks; then a big roller 

 took us, and in a mild Hawaiian fashion we went boiling 

 in; as we struck the dinghy rolled over and over, and we 

 jumped and went shooting in, to find bottom knee-deep. 

 When the boat righted, Manuel had a grin of satisfaction 

 on his dusky face as the sailfish had parted company with 

 us ; the line had doubtless chafed off on the coral rocks, and 

 he held the line up to prove it. 



This was hard luck, and we both, after the fashion of 

 anglers ancient and modern, decided that, beyond any ques- 

 tion, it was the largest and most ferocious sailfish ever 

 grained on any reef. 



Manuel guessed it at ten feet, and its weight at two hun- 

 dred and fifty pounds, but I, who had all the really hard 

 work, thought eight feet and one hundred and fifty pounds 

 was enough, and, doubtless, we were both wrong. The 

 average fish of this kind taken is six or seven feet in length, 

 but I am confident that I have grained specimens and lost 

 them, that were eight or nine feet long. The cousin of this 

 species, Istiophorus gladius, the sailfish of the Indian Ocean, 

 is said on rather uncertain authority to attain a length of 

 twenty feet or more, and so I have probably not exaggerated 

 my own fish. The reef here was perforated or washed out, 

 so that there were several channels through which large 



