A QUEEN OF FISH. 



71 



make it plain to you ; that is to say, if you are lucky enough 

 to hook one. In some ways they reminded us of a 

 Whitehead torpedo, and, indeed, they looked almost as 

 artificial. With a snout tapering off with nearly mathe- 

 matical precision and with a deadty potentiality for dealiag 

 a lightning-like blow ; with a tail and caudal peduncle 

 so artificially chiselled and so beautifully proportioned 

 that they simply " speak " of something designed by a 

 masterhand for the final word in motive power ; and with 

 a long tapering body almost mechanical in its fine cut 

 lines ; you have before you a very clipper of the submarine 

 depths. 



To some of the slowly moving fish which live upon the 

 banks this five or six feet of materiahzed activity must 

 often appear like the very personification of Death ; for 

 with indicators set at " full speed ahead " it looks as if it 

 could go clean through a six-inch plank. 



It is not difficult to imagine, that with a piece of animal 

 mechanism of this lively potentiality at one end of a 

 fishing-line, things are liable to "hum." And according to 

 Lady Wilton's account they do. 



A queen-fish gives you no time to think. As you 

 sit on your chair in the stem of a slowly moving tarpon- 

 boat, watching your silvery bait twist and spin some 

 three feet beneath the water and some forty yards 

 astern ; a streak of yellowish light suddenly appears 

 from nowhere in particular, and before you have 

 time to gasp the fun begms. There is no nonsense about 

 this fish. Having made up its mind that it wants that 

 alluring Httle eight inches of shining bait, it takes it in 

 one red-hot lightning rush — crash — h — h — h. 



Up goes the rod ; the tip bending like a piece of quivering 

 steel. " Scream, scream, screamity-scream " yells your 

 Vom-hofe winch with its two hundred yards of line. 

 " Sizzle zip — zip sizzle " rips the straining line as it cuts 

 its way like a knife through the water and hums like a 

 telegraph wire in the wind. There is no time to breathe. 

 You have a feeling that something has happened, but 



