June 29, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
815 
HANNAH M. BELL ON CORAL REEF. 
side, a space a foot square. We plugged her 
with sponges and anything to hand and got her 
over to the beach, where Bill, who is a ship car¬ 
penter by trade, patched her up very neatly. 
During the squall the gunman, photographer and 
scribe took refuge in a frame building, used for 
postoffice, engineer’s quarters and officers, which 
had heavy wire cables run over the roof and 
through the rafters to hold it down in case of 
a hurricane like the one of 1906, which cost some 
500 lives, or the one of 1909 when the wind 
reached a velocity of 125 miles an hour, de¬ 
stroying long sections of the wooden trestle, yet 
failed to damage those arches and bridges which 
were reinforced with concrete. Resting on h.s 
laurels of the morning, the scribe went out after 
dinner with the gunman and captain, not fishing 
for fear of crossing our lines in the darkness. 
The gunman got four strikes, the last one part¬ 
ing his line, which had been sorely strained by 
his battle with the jewfish. 
The 19th was one of those exasperating 
East Coast days, warm and sunny, thermometer 
82 degrees, but blowing great guns northeast, 
and a bad lookout for tarpon. Nevertheless we 
all turned to early, and the photographer scored 
high with the real thing, forty-five minutes to 
gaff on the beach, 165 pounds, 7 feet 6 inches 
long. He got another one in the afternoon, a 
20-pound mite, and the scribe had a fine fish on 
for twenty minutes, but he escaped. This shows 
the elusiveness and attraction of the sport. It 
was so windy we expected nothing, but were 
kept quite busy. The men at the scribe’s sug¬ 
gestion, cut out the tarpon eyes and boiled them 
in salt water. Polished later with sweet oil and 
soft flannel, they look like moon stones or rock 
crystal and are rather a taking trophy. 
The less recorded the better of the next two 
days (20th and 21st) from the tarpon point of 
view. It blew northeast to beat the band, with 
sunny skies and warm weather. 
We pulled out on Thursday morning for 
thirty miles against wind and tide for Long Key, 
which is more sheltered and where we hoped to 
fish under a lee, and before starting experienced 
a sad loss. The gunman’s jewfish had been at¬ 
tached to the yacht with a long rope through his 
gills and had become one of the family. He 
splashed about contentedly alongside. We fed 
him with small fish, grape fruit, rotten tomatoes, 
empty boxes and other dainties. We had chris¬ 
tened him “Mr. Rosenberg’’ and had mapped 
out his brilliant future as an ornament to the 
Long Key Aquarium. Imagine our sorrow when 
a pull at his rope, equivalent to a call for break¬ 
fast, produced his head only in response, cut off 
at the neck by some monstrous shark. Thus did 
this sad tragedy of the sea take place while we 
slept. A mighty shark it must have been, to 
bite off and swallow, especially tail first, 100 
pounds of tough jewfish, with rough skin and 
sharp fins. 
Anchored at Long Key, Thursday afternoon 
for the night. The photographer and the scribe 
got their respective decorations from the Long 
Key Tarpon Club and awoke Friday, the 22d 
to find it still blowing hard northeast, thermome¬ 
ter 85 degrees, with bright sun and cloudless sky. 
Spent a pleasant morning on Mr. Worthington’s 
new ketch-rigged power yacht Naya and devour¬ 
ing our mail. Took on ice and steamed ten miles 
to Jewfish Bush, anchoring after dark. 
The same old gale from northeast was in 
evidence on Saturday and continued all day. We 
went for amberjack out in the channel, but with 
rough sea and roily water did no business. 
Same weather conditions on Sunday, with 
tropical downpour of rain. It was a threaten¬ 
ing evening, black as ink, except for the light¬ 
ning flashes, and blowing in heavy gusts. The 
little power yacht Cynthiana moved up from the 
trestle, where she caught the full force of the 
wind, so as to get a lee near us under Jewfish 
Bush Key. 
Monday, the 25th, wind shifted to north- 
northwest, cloudy and felt cold, thermometer 
75 degrees. Our time was growing short and 
with such adverse weather conditions we de¬ 
cided to work north, hoping to pick up a tarpon 
or two in Barnes Sound. Weighed at 7 a. m. 
and proceeded under power across the Bay of 
Florida, with jib set to steady Samoa. The cap¬ 
tain conned her neat¬ 
ly through Cowpen’s 
Passage at dead low 
water, the flats bare 
on both sides. We 
scared up a “rook¬ 
ery” of upward of 
fifty pelicans perched 
on mangroves, and 
they soared grace¬ 
fully about, gliding- 
long distances on the 
stiff breeze at great 
speed. Passed through 
Jewfish Drawbridge 
at 3 130 p. M., and an¬ 
chored six or seven 
miles further on in 
Barnes Sound. 
A still, windless 
morning was the 26th 
and with thermom¬ 
eter as low as 60 de¬ 
grees. Heroically and 
stoically we took our 
morning salt water dip, which has been one of 
the joys of the trip, but to-day was robbed of 
all its pleasure. The launch went back to the 
drawbridge station for our “lost, strayed or 
stolen” groceries, and returned without them, so 
we find ourselves eggless and short of other 
supplies. With the exception of harpooning a 
sting ray and getting some pan fish for break¬ 
fast, in place of eggs, we cannot boast of to¬ 
day’s bag. Bill and the scribe were stalking 
bone fish this morning and he did a “neat turn.” 
The small rowboat was anchored in the usual 
fashion, with an oar driven into the sandy bot¬ 
tom and a half hitch of the painter round it. 
'I'he scribe noticed Bill noiselessly divesting him¬ 
self of his sneakers and depositing his pipe, to¬ 
bacco and matches therein. Then, in an instant 
he made a graceful parabolic dive from the bot¬ 
tom boards of the boat and came up in a twink¬ 
ling, shoving a loo-pound logger-head turtle in 
front of him. The brute was snapping about 
with his horny eagle-like beak in savage fashion, 
and the scribe rendered an amateur’s assistance 
by grabbing his hind flippers and hauling him 
over the gunwale, when he lay on his back on 
the bottom of the boat, beating his breast with 
his front flippers in the saddest possible -vvay, 
like a sinning soul, until Bill bored a hole through 
them and made them fast with a bit of line. The 
scribe watched this operation in speechless 
horror, but the turtle gave no shrinking or sign 
of pain nor did a drop of blood exude, and he 
really believes the animal did not suffer. This 
was a comparatively still moonlit night, the heavy 
dew was noticeable, almost like a shower of rain. 
New Publications. 
Modern Riding and Horse Education, by Major 
Noel Birch. Wm. R. Jenkins Co., New York. 
301 pages, $2 net. 
Every man or woman interested in horseback 
riding naturally wants to know all about the 
horse. Major Birch, of the Royal Horse Artillery 
of Great Britain, has done justice to this sub¬ 
ject in his book. He tells how to ride and ride 
well; the use of the spur; the selection of 
equipment and the training of horses. It is a 
hook the equestrian should have. 
