224 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
resistance. Meanwhile the supreme object of every 
man-jack on board was concentrated on frantic efforts 
to seize hold of the line somewhere beyond the rod point! 
Some sought to effect this insanity with boat-hooks, 
others by wading, a third lot were getting the pinnace 
away. The function of a rod as a factor in killing fish 
was wdiolly ignored. 
I therefore took the rod from Mahomed and ordering 
all hands to stand clear, reeled in the slack and brought 
pressure to bear. On feeling itself held, the fish responded 
at once with a straight-away burst of 80 yards, terminating 
in a mighty “dowse” on the surface. Two other fairly 
determined runs followed, but neither so far nor so fast 
as the first, and after that there was twenty minutes’ 
hardish fighting ere any visible sign indicated the approach 
of the climax. Then with intense interest we watched to 
see what manner of monster we were tackling. By sundry 
head-and-tail “breaks” we had judged the fish to be well 
nigh two yards long. Despite that foreknowledge, it was 
nevertheless a somewhat startling vision when a huge flat 
head appeared alongside — a ghost - like object in the 
opaque water with long tentacles streaming away astern, 
recalling Sir Samuel Baker’s simile of “a cross between 
a sponging-bath and a waggon-wheel! ” 
By means of a big iron hook that we had brought out 
with the view of catching crocodiles, the played-out silurus 
was gaffed and lifted aboard. Although its head was 
broad and flat, with a gash-like mouth, yet the body, aft 
of the shoulders, was upright, not unlike a giant conger- 
eel, and fringed above and below with continuous fins. 
This fish weighed 45 lb. and measured a trifle under 5 feet 
in length. Subsequently we caught several others even 
bigger, the two heaviest scaling 48 and 55 lb. 
Our crew held that these fish were uneatable and their 
dictum we accepted untested. There was something 
repulsive about their appearance and their musky smell. 
The bait used was a lump of raw meat. This silurus, 
