CHAPTER XVII 
NILE ANGLING 
Fish we partly depended upon for our commissariat; 
but having more insistent duties ourselves, we largely 
left the angling to Mahomed Maghazi and Abdul Hamil 
who caught a daily supply. The best of their captures 
was a fish that, at superficial glance, somewhat resembled 
a cod, and these averaged some io or 12 lb. apiece, though 
Mahomed constantly averred that he had hooked and 
lost others of colossal dimensions. That is, of course, 
the unvarying tale of the angler ; but in Mahomed’s case 
it was undoubtedly true. These fish were the “ Bayard” 
of Sir Samuel Baker who, in his Nile Tributaries (p. 214) 
mentions having frequently seen them up to 60 or 70 lb. 
weight. 
I had brought out a rod specially for the “big-game 
fishing” on the Red Sea—(described later)—a stiff harling- 
rod by Farlow, only some 7 feet long, with an enormous 
wooden winch that held 200 yards of line. We had 
brought it with us up the Nile, and that rod lay constantly 
fishing by itself on the ’midship deck. One morning just 
as we were going ashore at dawn, the reel gave forth a 
startled shriek that indicated “something big” at the far 
end. A few moments’ observation of what followed served 
to explain Mahomed’s previous failures with these Nilotic 
monsters. Our good dragoman, having seized the rod, 
held its point directed straight as a rifle-barrel towards 
the game; thus allowing the captive at its own sweet will 
to take out as much line as it fancied without effort or 
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