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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



After an hour or so, however, during 

 which it alternated between trying to pull 

 the bow under water and suddenly turn- 

 ing and endeavoring to come up under us, 

 the anchor began to catch hold better, 

 and our giant was becoming a little more 

 amenable to reason, so that a number of 

 times we were able to haul in slack, re- 

 arrange our lines, and even to get up 

 within 20 or 30 feet, as it labored along 

 with its great batlike fins, a little less 

 powerful in stroke and somewhat slower, 

 in plain sight, five or six feet below the 

 surface of the water. 



It was at this point that Mr. Allison 

 secured the pictures, which we have every 

 reason to believe are the first and only 

 actual photographs of a giant devil-fish 

 alive in its natural element. These pho- 

 tographs, because of the refraction of 

 light in the water, do not give a clear idea 

 of this monster's enormity, and make it 

 hard to realize that our remarkable catch 

 measured 22 feet across from the tip of 

 one pectoral fin to the other and 17 feet 

 1 inch from the head to the end of the 

 tail, and, moreover, weighed considerably 

 more than 3,000 pounds. 



Seeing that it was well-nigh impossi- 

 ble to give it a death blow, and that at 

 any minute in its jockeying the fish might 

 come up squarely under the boat and up- 

 set us in spite of all that we could do, 

 and as all manner of sharks had been at- 

 tracted by its struggle and loss of blood, 

 we naturally did not relish the thought 

 of any such experience, so we signaled to 

 the U Apache for a gun. 



Luckily, about this time, a fast-sailing 

 little island sponge boat approached us to 

 see what the excitement was all about, 

 and we managed to make the spongers 

 understand that they must go back to the 

 yacht and bring the rifles, which had, 

 unfortunately, been forgotten in our 

 hurry to get started in the early morning. 



VICTORY AFT£R HOURS OF BATTI^ 



The native mariners were most willing 

 to help, and made all haste possible ; so, 

 after another half hour of skirmishing 

 and ring generalship on both sides, the 

 ship's motor-driven dory came tearing 

 out with an express rifle, and we were 



enabled to give our giant its coup de 

 grace. 



Until that moment not one of us real- 

 ized that nearly five hours had elapsed 

 since we first tackled this Jumbo of the 

 deep, and none of us knew how tired we 

 were, for in good truth we had been far 

 too busy to give a thought to such small 

 matters. Although this fish finally had 

 four harpoons in its body and a dozen 

 shots in its head and heart, it was by no 

 means dead, and even then we had con- 

 siderable difficulty in towing it into the 

 harbor, some miles away. 



Naturally, the natives of Bimini were 

 very much interested in the capture, for 

 devil-fish destroy great numbers of food- 

 fish, and we experienced no difficulty in 

 engaging the services of 15 of them to 

 help to get the carcass ashore, having de- 

 cided to try to remove the hide and bony 

 structure for mounting. 



By bringing into play a heavy block 

 and tackle borrowed from the islanders, 

 which was used for lifting and weighing 

 cargoes of sisal fiber, and after much 

 breaking of ropes, to say nothing of the 

 wharf structure's being in serious danger 

 of collapse because of the great weight 

 of the fish, we finally succeeded in getting 

 most of its body out of water, so that it 

 could be photographed and weighed by 

 means of a large sisal scale. The utmost 

 capacity of this scale was 3,000 pounds, 

 and this is all which is claimed for the 

 fish, although we judged it weighed 4,000, 

 or possibly 5,000, pounds. 



Through the courtesy of some friends, 

 who had run over from the Florida coast 

 in a fast express cruiser to join us in the 

 sport, but who arrived too late to take 

 part in the actual capture, we were en- 

 abled to send back the necessary parts to 

 an expert taxidermist for mounting, al- 

 though it w r as a serious question to know 

 what to do with so enormous a thing after 

 it was mounted, for not many rooms will 

 take care of a fish measuring 22 feet 

 across, and it was decided it would be pre- 

 sented to the Cocolobo Club, the unique 

 cruising and fishing club located near 

 Miami, where a special room is being built 

 to receive it. 



