298 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 9, 1912 
the fish swims away, as if avoiding the vessel, 
or takes fright and sinks. 
Of the first of our two captures I will say only 
that it was made ten miles south of Block Island, 
where we were in company with about fifty other 
\ essels and boats, including one steam yacht, all 
cruising up and down with men slung in the rig¬ 
ging, until it seemed as if no fish could show a 
fin without being chased. We sighted several fins 
and finally the skipper brought us up on one so 
steadily and smoothly that I could claim small 
credit for striking him well. Our helmsman was a 
distinguished physicist, a novice in steering. But 
so accustomed to measuring a thousandth of a 
millimeter that such a coarse matter as a quarter 
of a point presented no difficulties to him. This 
cruise, which was especially a fishing trip, was 
curtailed by three days of calm and fog and by 
a desire to see the Harvard-Yale race at New 
London. And a sad sight it was for a Yale man. 
The second fish was struck—“ironed” is the 
technical term—late in August off the Maine 
coast. We had made an early start from the 
Wood Island anchorage with a fine northwester, 
and, as we were behind our schedule and were 
anxious to get around into Southern waters, I 
was hoping for plenty of breeze and was enter¬ 
taining thoughts of a run straight through to 
Vineyard Haven. But the fates willed it other¬ 
wise and very much better, which is not always 
the result when the fates take us in hand. As 
the morning advanced, no little spots of cloud 
came up in the northwest to foretell a lasting 
breeze; instead of that, a faint haze dimmed the 
clearness of the sky and by 9 o’clock our breeze 
was gone and a light air had come in from the 
southward. This ended our hope of a long run, 
and in a spirit of resignation on the half-a-loaf 
principle, we rigged the pole and turned to 
swordfishing. The skipper climbed to the for¬ 
ward spreader and tried to think he was com¬ 
fortable on that uncomfortable seat. Will took 
the wheel, Humphrey trimmed sheets, and I went 
to my post in the pulpit. I would not say that 
we were quite without hopes, for it was a good 
day and good fishing ground, and we had heard 
in Portland that there were fish about, but at 
that time of the year they were not in schools, 
and our only chance was the possibility of com¬ 
ing upon some solitary rover. But no more on 
salt water than along a trout stream is it all 
of fishing to fish. The day was perfection. There 
was breeze enough to work the yacht, yet it was 
mainly aloft and touched the water only in stray 
patches. For the most part the surface was 
glassy and there was a very long smooth swell, 
hardly more than a regular heaving of the sea. 
We were at this time a little south of Cape 
Porpoise, some five miles offshore, and we first 
stood out to the southeast to get into deeper 
water. A few other boats were out on the same 
errand as ours, easily distinguishable from other 
vessels by the dark bunch on the foremast wlv'ch 
showed that the lookout was aloft. One boat 
came near us on which lookout, helmsman, striker 
and crew were all condensed into a single per¬ 
son. He was what thoughtless people would 
call an old man, about sixty, I should guess, with 
a beard as gray as mine and ten inches longer. 
His boat was sloop-rigged, about thirty feet over¬ 
all, running under power. He was in the pulpit, 
ready to strike, with tiller lines rigged forward 
so that he could steer, and with a trip-line to 
throw off his switch. Later, when we were haul¬ 
ing our fish, he came alongside to offer con¬ 
gratulations and encouraging predictions as to 
the probable weight of our catch, and I thought 
I detected a certain youthful ostentation in the 
way he displayed the handiness of his rig. And 
certainly the spectacle of a man of his age—his 
middle age—swordfishing all alone twenty miles 
from a harbor was a bit out of the usual. 
The day, as I have said, was especially beau¬ 
tiful, and I sat in the pulpit, keeping a fair look¬ 
out, though I trusted chiefly to the skipper’s 
keener eyesight, smoking an occasional pipe, a 
little drowsy at times, but dreaming a pleasant 
dream. It is an odd position; the yacht is all 
behind you, and as you look back, seems far 
away. You sway a little with the motion of the 
boat, you feel high above the water, and when 
the vessel comes about, the flapping of the jib 
makes you clutch the iron rail of the stand. 
And even on a warm day and in a light breeze 
it is a surprisingly chilly spot. For nearly three 
hours we stood quietly to and fro about a dozen 
miles offshore, and I was beginning to remem¬ 
ber that we had breakfasted at five and to th'nk 
that twelve was not too early for lunch, when 
the skipper saw a fin and called to Will to ‘ bring 
her on the wind.” The fish was as much as a quar¬ 
ter of a mile to windward, his fin standing out 
black against the smooth water. Even my eyes 
could make him out, though I lost him when he 
got into a patch of rippled sea. Then began a 
chase in a series of short tacks as the fish turned 
aimlessly one way or another. It seemed to me 
a long chase and my memorj^ of it is chiefly 
a memory of my own feelings. I had of course 
stood up when the skipper hailed and had cleared 
the lines so that they might run freely, but I 
must acknowledge that I was distinctly nervous, 
shaking with ‘“swordfish chill,” a malady of the 
same nature as “buck fever.” 
The members of my family then on board had 
net been with us when we got the first fish, and 
I was for this reason extremely anxious not to 
miss my stroke and spoil what might be their 
os i^' chance of seeing a fish taken. Nor was I 
wholly unmindful of the possibility that discredit 
might befall a respectable husband and father 
in the very presence of his family. In short, 
some highly vivid emotions, of a considerable 
variety, were chasing each other through my 
m'tid, while the schooner chased the fish. I was 
really bothered also by the fact that I was con¬ 
tinually losing sight of the fish and was afraid 
I might come upon him before I could see him. 
But the skipper, beside conning the vessel and 
watching the fish, had a bit of his mind to spare 
for me and kept directing my poor eyes, unt.l at 
last, after what seemed a very long time, he 
said: “Right ahead now; we’ll get him on this 
tack.” Then I saw him in a patch of dark 
water, swimming slowly about, and from that 
moment I forgot my emotions and fixed my eye 
and mind upon the spot by the side of the fin 
where I proposed to put in the iron. 
As we came within a hundred feet, he turned 
toward us and I could see the whole of him, 
a dark reddish brown creature as big as a boat, 
suspended in the clear water and swinging his 
sword slowly from side to side. I could see him 
then, and I can see him now. When I was with¬ 
in twenty feet, he began to sink, intending no 
doubt to go under the vessel, but the tip of his 
fin was still above water when I struck. I felt 
the iron go well in and saw that I had struck 
in the right spot, but to make a sure thing of 
it, I whirled around in the pulpit and threw my 
whole weight upon the top of the pole, giving 
my wrist a wrench which still troubles me in 
using a pen. When I jerked the pole out, leav¬ 
ing the dart behind, the iron-shaft was bent at 
a point about fifteen inches from the end, and I 
knew that the dart must be well bedded. Later, 
when the fish was opened, we found that it had 
gone through into the stomach and had toggled 
against the tough muscle. 
Long before I had put up the pole and crawled 
back to the deck (for I was too shaky to do 
anything but crawl), the skipper was down from 
the masthead and was tending the whizzing line, 
keeping a strain upon it and seeing that it ran 
free. It had of course been carefully coiled to 
prevent fouling. The usual practice is to haul 
(that is, play the fish) from a dory, and a regu¬ 
lar fisherman will often have several boats out 
at the same time, but we had no tender suitable 
to this purpose, and hauling from the yacht had 
the advantage of giving us all a share in the 
excitement. We lowered jibs, but kept a steer¬ 
ageway on and shifted from one tack to the 
other to keep the line clear of the hull. I left 
the work of hauling to the skipper and had 
leisure to watch him and lay in some stock of 
information for future use. In spite of the dart 
in his stomach, the fish showed plenty of fight. 
There are well authenticated stories of fish 
jumping clear of the water or driving ther 
swords through the bottom of a dory, but our 
fish merely kept strongly on his way toward 
deep water. The skipper got in line when he 
could and paid out slowly when he had to, but 
he could not bring the fish to the surface at all, 
and twice we were obliged to let the whole line 
go and see our keg moving off at a rather de- 
pressingly rapid speed. This, however, was small 
gain for the fish, for the towing of a keg and 
a hundred fathoms of line was of itself enough 
to tire him fast. At these times we worked to 
windward and picked up the keg with a boathook. 
It was just before twelve that we struck him, 
and it was after two when he stopped running 
and settled to the bottom. We let him lie a few 
minutes and then hauled him to the top, a dead 
weight. As he showed no sign of life, we put 
a strap of heavy rope around his tail and could 
say that he was ours. The photograph gives 
some notion of his head, but suffers from the 
foreshortening. 
The playing of the fish had taken a little over 
two hours, and, if we had been ready for lunch 
at twelve, it will be understood that by 2 o’clock 
our readiness had not decreased. We laid the 
course of the vessel for Portsmouth and our 
own course for the galley, and then spent the 
afternoon in pure gloating. The fish was, by 
careful measurement, 13 feet i inch in length; 
the sword, cut down to the solid bone, is thirty- 
eight inches long, almost perfectly straight and 
uninjured by nicks or flaws. The bony eyeball, 
which we cut out and dried, is four and three- 
quarter inches in diameter. And, to put all my 
statistics together, the weight after cleaning, with 
head and fins cut off, was 502 pounds. The 
skipper, who has taken many fish, says that he 
has only seen one larger, which weighed 568 
pounds. Though it was midnight when we 
drifted in to our anchorage off Kittery Point, 
not even a day of twenty hours could dim our 
satisfaction over such a prize. 
