Sword-fishing at Block Island. 
83 
take care of themselves, while the vessel steams away toward 
another fish which has been sighted. A fresh keg, line and 
harpoon are ready, the same shaft serving again, and the 
operation is repeated. 
But our fish is by no means abandoned; he is firmly 
attached to the resisting keg, which is floating upon the 
surface and against which he pulls, tiring himself out just 
as a salmon tires himself by struggling against the elasticity 
of a rod. We see the keg, perhaps a mile or more away, 
dancing up and down with the struggles of the fish. Grad¬ 
ually its motion becomes fainter — the fish is becoming ex¬ 
hausted. The steamer’s boat has already started in pursuit, 
and when the fish has ceased to struggle it is an easy 
matter for the man in the boat to bring him to the surface 
and there give him the coup de grace by lancing him in the 
gills. He then makes the fish’s tail fast to the stern of 
the boat and elevates an oar as a signal that he is ready 
to be taken on board. 
In the meantime the steamer may have gone far off in 
chase of other fish, and sometimes, to a landsman’s eye, 
the man, all alone in the boat with nothing else in sight, 
offers a realistic picture of a shipwrecked mariner. Instances 
have been known, when fog has arisen, of the steamer being 
unable to find the boat before darkness comes on and so 
the poor lanceman drifts, tied to his dying fish, until some 
friendly passing vessel rescues him and takes him into port. 
Such instances, however, are happily rare. 
There is another danger, that the wounded fish, if not 
thoroughly exhausted, may come to the surface and turn 
upon the boat, piercing it with his sword before he can be 
lanced. In one of the hotels at Block Island there may 
be seen a portion of the planking of a boat with the sec¬ 
tion of a sword completely traversing it. For such reasons 
passengers are never allowed to go in the boat. On one 
of mv trips in the steamer a wounded fish, seeking to re¬ 
venge himself, charged straight at the iron propeller, break- 
off several inches of his weapon in the attempt. But no 
such unfortunate occurrences mar the pleasure of our trip: 
