FOREST AND STREAM 
so that when a trapper was fortunate enough 
to secure an animal worth thousands of dollars 
no local purchaser would give him more than a 
few hundred, according to agreement among the 
monopolists. This worked great unjustice to the 
trapper. 
The Board has given a great deal of attention 
to the abuses reported during the last few months 
and is taking steps to make the law respecting 
exportation more equitable, so that it will give 
the poor trapper and furrier an equal chance 
with the wealthy fox farmer. 
But above all, the Board intends to protect and 
conserve the industry; to save the foxes by extra 
supervision of the burrows during the close sea¬ 
son ; by vigorously prosecuting poachers, and by 
the fine or imprisonment and cancelling the 
licenses of any fox farmer convicted in any 
breach of the law. 
It has been asserted in the local press that 
the fox farmers have got “in on the ground floor” 
by stocking their farms with valuable animals 
at nominal prices, that they want to keep the 
business a close monopoly, and that they have 
violated the law and encouraged the violation by 
exporting foxes that were poached and were out 
on their farms for a few days, and that already 
some of them have made arrangements for the 
robbing of the burrows in the present close sea¬ 
son, when the young foxes will be old enough to 
handle. 
The Board already has some information on 
hand, and believes that a vigorous prosecution 
H ERE we are at last. Where? Right on 
board the little ten ton, wall-sided, cat- 
rigged yacht “Blonde,” now raising her 
anchor off the Palafox street wharf in Pensa¬ 
cola, on a breezy, tumultuous February day in 
the year 190—but let us not be to particular as 
to the exact year. Where are we bound? 
Anywhere off the outer bar of Pensacola Bay. 
For it is rumored that Spanish mackerel are 
schooling somewhere off the long Gulf front of 
Santa Rosa Island; or were, the day before. The 
wind is dead ahead, and, as we have to hurry, 
we catch a tow from a tug bound outward, with 
a view of getting a chance to tow inside some 
one of the Norwegian barques that came hither 
after the yellow pine lumber that is one of Pensa¬ 
cola’s main industries. 
There is also quite a fleet of regular fishing 
vessels used in the Red Snapper fisheries in the 
farther gulf, but we are merely out for a day 
or two on an independent cruise for what the 
gods may send us as anglers. 
We hope mostly for a good time with the 
mackerel, the bonita, or, as the old Spaniards of 
the Keys termed them, “Fierce Beautiful Bonita.” 
of a few well-known shysters will compel such 
a respect for the law that decent trappers, fur¬ 
riers and farmers will be only too glad to assist 
in carrying it out. 
The industry is very valuable, and is capable 
of being developed to such an extent as to be¬ 
come an asset of such magnitude as will ma¬ 
terially add to the wealth of the colony. The 
difficulty is to control the craze that now rages, 
and save the wild foxes so that they may not 
be thoroughly cleaned out during the next year 
or two. 
Specialists say that the Newfoundland foxes 
are the best to be had in America. Their fur is 
superior, and as breeding stock for farms they 
are said to be very hardy and vigorous. 
With the experience of the last year as a guide, 
the Game Commission is now formulating new 
rules governing the capture, disposition and pres¬ 
ervation of these valuable animals, with the 
double object of preventing their extermination 
and of regulating their capture and sale. And 
it is further hoped that these amendments will 
meet not only with hearty approval of all the 
legitimate trappers and farmers but also with 
their active assistance in carrying out the law, 
so that this, at present, very promising industry 
may prove of great interest to all concerned. 
With the intelligent regulation by the author¬ 
ities and the co-operation of the trappers and 
farmers, Newfoundland ought, in a few years, 
to be able to supply valuable pedigree stock 
enough at top prices to supply the increasing 
demand in Great Britain and the United States. 
The “Buccaneering Bonita”; as the old buc¬ 
caneers knew well that the habits and gameness 
of this small pirate of the deep seas were strongly 
akin to their own. 
It did not take long to whirl the Blonde down 
the ten mile stretch through the commodious 
bay. Then came a few minutes of surging strug¬ 
gle over the inner and outer bars. After that, 
our line is cast off; the tug dismisses us with 
a blast from her siren, and veers off in search 
of bigger return game. We hoist a reefed sail, 
while the mournful tones of a whistling buoy in 
the roadstead lend dismal cheer to our eastward 
cruise. 
The big sail went up flapping, and as the south¬ 
easter bellied it heavily to starboard, Tom (my 
chum) and I began to wonder if a double instead 
of a single reef would not have been safer. 
Thud! The first wave struck the port bow 
with a shock that sent a bucketful or so upon 
Tom, who, under the skipper’s direction, was 
lowering the center-board another notch or two. 
“Wow! Ug-g-h-h! Ease her off, can’t you? 
Think I’m a duck?” 
Thus Tom from out his oil skins, which we 
all had thoughtfully donned. As for yours truly 
—well, although I am a seasoned small-boat sailor, 
the first heavy puff and surge of sea gives me 
certain inward qualms, which usually take up 
most of my attention for a spell. But by the 
time the Blonde had stood southward out from 
the coastline for a mile or so, I fairly had my 
sea legs, so that when we came about on the 
port tack I took the helm myself, with Tom easing 
away or hauling in on the main sheet. Also, 
our stretch of sail did not now seem to indi¬ 
cate premeditated rashness on the skipper’s part, 
but merely a natural desire to reach the mackerel 
grounds without waste of time. 
Were we in time? Be it known that Senor 
Bonita is quite as erratic as he is savagely beauti¬ 
ful. After feeding for hours in one locality a 
school may suddenly sink from sight, and not 
another mackerel be sighted thereabouts. I say 
“sighted.” Not that they are out of the water; 
but on the advent of a school the surface of 
the sea darkens, as if a' wind-squall were pass¬ 
ing. Thus they remain, feeding on the shallows 
where flourish the grasses and the half-grown, 
stupid mullet that are their prey. 
The wind roughened. Would our skipper author¬ 
ize another reef? Instead, after getting out our 
tackle, and seeing to the tank where several 
dozen small mullet and hickory shad were stowed 
for use as live bait, he came aft and displaced 
me at the tiller. Just in time, perhaps, for the 
lee gunwale was running water to the high dash¬ 
board, and a delicate, sure touch was needed to 
avert another water cataclysm upon Tom, who 
was by this time assorting and getting ready his 
hooks—large, stout hooks, not only to hold the 
live bait fast, but to grip the mackerel that has 
or should have swallowed it. 
“Goot wedder for mackerel,” vouchsafes the 
skipper, whose German accent betokens old- 
time familiarity with the stormy weather of the 
far-away North Sea of his own country. “Ef 
they are dere, we get ’em—ya.” 
We hope so, of course. Presently Balum, a 
half-grown negro boy, attached to the yacht, or 
skipper, or both, sings out from his perch on 
the fifty-pound anchor wedged in his support 
forward of the one mast: 
“I see ’em, Marse! Dar dey be!” 
Balum essays to point out what looks like a 
cloud shadow on the water several hundred yards 
away, but which is hidden from the stern sheets 
by the bellying, close-hauled mainsail. Just then 
Skipper Schmell, trying to sight the invisible, 
lets the Blonde luff half a point, and the crest 
of a larger wave inundates the lad, even washing 
off his fragment of palmetto hat, that is whipped 
with the water into the forehold. 
But Balum is game. Back he scrambles, res¬ 
cues hat with one hand and points with the other 
under the main boom, which Tom is easing off 
at the skipper’s word. 
“Gre’t king!” cries Balum, flinging the wet pal¬ 
metto under the deck, and beginning to work 
the pump at. the center-board box. “Dat was 
some wettin’. But—dar dey is! I seen um fust! 
Ent I boss—” 
“Get the bait out!” snapped Schmell. “Get 
retty for to go to it—ya!” This last to us, for 
it was really a school of—something; probably 
some of them were bonita. As we eased around 
the edges under a more free sheet, the shadow 
grew, spread irregularly, then contracted here 
Out After Bonita 
A Yarn of the Gulf Coast 
By William Perry Brown. 
