FOREST AND STREAM 
583 
and there, not unlike the reflection, on an im¬ 
movable back-ground, of wind-stirred foliage in 
bright sunshine. But it was no shadow blacken¬ 
ing that southeaster tossed sea, for not a cloud 
was visible between us and the sun, now high 
overhead. Schmell gave the school a wide berth, 
anxious to sheer in under its leeside. Hanging 
around the school a drove of porpoises churned 
the waves at irregular intervals, or jumped and 
spouted in play. 
“Dem porpus no care. All fun for dem. But 
shark undt, berhaps, saw-fish get after de mul¬ 
lets, too. Also dey gets some of de smaller 
mackerel—look!” 
As the Blonde luffed into the wind’s eye, a 
small cloud of jumping, darting fish rose scat- 
teringly, not far away. Besides the always preyed 
on mullet, Schmell declared he recognized skip¬ 
jack, cirvallie, red-fish and, 
“Ah—ya! Eeet iss mackerel. You see him? 
Look! De head long, pointed—ach ! Look at 
the jaws of him! Shark undt saw-fish alone 
will make de mackerel run. Undt, very like, ett 
is de mullet dey are after.” 
So it seemed. The school, a large and mixed 
one, preying on the mullet and hickory shad that 
feed on the long submarine grasses coating these 
shoaly waters, were in turn driven by the larger 
fish. 
But meantime, with Balum's aid, we baited up 
our lines, using small mullet from the tank, hook¬ 
ing the living bait just above the spine in front 
of the dorsal fin. There was too much wind 
for our rods, for we fished to windward. Instead, 
we used coiled lines, with pretty heavy sinkers, 
and a foot or two of wire or tough cat-gut next 
to the baited hooks. A moderate swing of the 
arm, in order not to dislodge or stifle the bait, 
and the line sailed thirty feet or more through 
the air into the midst of the school. Almost 
directly we began to haul in our fish. Tom’s 
came first, but as he lifted a ten or twelve pound¬ 
er over the rail his disappointed ejaculation 
made Schmell laugh. 
“Only a redt-fish—heh! Veil, vot you expect? 
Half of dose fish,” waving a hand at the school, 
“all kinds but mackerel. Look dere!” 
I was then hauling in my first catch, a good 
sized cirvallie. Balum also caught a skip-jack 
larger than either of ours. Schmell bade us bait 
up again, while he had Balum brought the yacht 
further round, and farther from the disturbing 
shark and other monsters that seemed to be har¬ 
rying the outer flank of the school. We tried 
again, and yet again; but no bonita were landed, 
though Tom caught a pompano, really one of 
the choicest sea-fish going. We had no trouble 
in catching fish, but they were not the kind of 
fish we had come out to catch. 
Finally, we threw out our anchor and put Balum 
to getting out our lunch, while our baited lines 
were made fast to cleats or thwarts. 
“Always my luck,” gloomed Tom, whose ap¬ 
petite seemed to equal that of the shark and other 
monsters, whose rushes were still manifest by 
the occasional skitter of jumping fish. “Last year 
I tried for bonita off Ship Island Light, just 
out from Biloxi, for two days. We used shrimp, 
live fish, everything. Caught scads of good 
channel fish, but nary mackerel. Say, Schmell, 
darned if I believe there are any more mackerel—” 
“I show you some, but shark he made small 
fish jump. Dey’re here, all right. Too mooch 
sun, I reckon. Vait, vait Squall coom by and 
by.” 
“Gre’t king! Look a’ dat!” exclaimed Balum, 
dropping the last of the sandwiches he was pass¬ 
ing, and jumping for one of the lines. 
The line was swaying back and forth in a 
series of sharp jerks, while in the water not far 
away two huge furrows were plowed with in¬ 
conceivable rapidity as some one of the larger 
fish rushed upon its prey. Before we could get 
up Balum had the line—his own, by the way— 
and was hauling in, hand over hand. It seemed 
to be a race between him and the shark, or saw¬ 
fish, as to which could get the hooked fish, which 
assisted Balum by swimming in the yacht's di¬ 
rection. 
Behind Balum's catch, whatever it was, we 
saw the huge furrows following closely. It was 
evidently a shark of the shovelnosed variety. 
Captain Schmell picked up his boat lance with 
detachable head, gathered up the coil of line, 
and just as we were assisting Balum with a 
hand net, the skipper hurled his weapon straight 
at the pursuer. The boil and surge of water 
that followed showed that he had struck some¬ 
thing. The stiff line z-zipped forth, but Schmell 
dexterously took a turn round a cleat, then 
turned coolly to the darky, who was enthused 
of one bare leg, against which Senor Bonita had 
flung itself, and from which trickled a little blood. 
“Oh you gran’ raskill!” shouted the boy. “But 
I done got yo’ fust!” 
“Oh—dry up!” growled Tom, now more ab¬ 
sorbed in the larger struggles of the big fish 
which our skipper had so dextrously lanced. 
"What is it. Cap? Shovelnose?” 
“Ya, ya. Dere he go!” Schmell, turning from 
Balum’s catch, was pulling in the line to which 
was attached the pole of the lance. “Zat line 
was not wired; shark bite um somehow. No 
matter. Shoffelnose no goot. But dere iss your 
mackerel—big one, for bonita. We git more 
presently.” 
Coiling and stowing the line, then fitting in 
another detachable lance blade, Schmell paused 
to point toward the windy, low-lying scuds and 
rags of cloud hurrying in from the gulf. Also, 
we began to feel the heave and slosh of weightier 
swells, tipped with growing white-caps, and we 
noticed that the sun was withdrawing behind a 
thickening upper haze that was turning the bright 
morning into sinister gray. 
“More wind, more squall and, berhaps, some 
rain,” declared Schmell, at the same time order¬ 
ing Balum to put in another reef. 
By this time the mackerel lay quiescent, palpi¬ 
In California This Catch is Not Considered “Hogging the River.” 
by the fact that he had caught the first bonita. 
Out of the hand-net it dropped, disclosing four 
or five pounds of fighting, muscular energy. As 
the fish jumped and flopped here and there in 
the yacht’s hold, its slaty-blue back, brightly 
mottled sides, and whitish belly shimmered in the 
sunlight. The long, pointed jaws, coated by many 
rows of razor-sharp teeth that snapped vicious¬ 
ly, evinced its ruthless, piratical nature. Usually 
the short but violent struggle that accompanies 
its capture ends only with its quick, utter ex¬ 
haustion. But in this case the shark's pursuit 
had driven it directly to us before its strength 
was exhausted. As it jumped about, snapp’ng 
aimlessly, Balum shrieked out: 
“Done bit me! Look, marse!” 
He showed Captain Schmell a nip on the calf 
tating. a thing of dwindling beauty and arrested 
vitality and power. With the escape of the shark, 
which none of us had more than half glimpsed, 
the vast school of fish, as the sunlight waned, 
seemed to separate, disappear, then become visible 
here, there, everywhere, all about us, partially 
vanishing, and again reappearing. But the fringe 
of bigger fish seemed to have gone somewhere 
else. 
A blacker onslaught of wind came with rain. 
The surface of the sea, like working yeast, 
showed nothing now of the vanished school. 
“Vhy ain’t you all fish yet?” snapped Schmell, 
turning momentarily from his and Balum’s man¬ 
agement of the yacht, which was now under 
double reef, plunging seaward through the choppy 
waves. “Now your time—heh? Mackerel, blue 
