Raymond’s 
Reply 
By R. J. DELANO 
IFF! BANG!  kerplunk! 
B “damn!” A hundred and 
sixty pounds and six feet 
of wrathful boatman, tripping 
over my misplaced tin tackle-box, 
landed in a heap at my doorway. 
A stampede through a brass band 
would have been soothing in com- 
parison. 
*All right,” i 
awake.” 
“Awake! hell! so are we all of 
us,’ growled Doc Sutton from 
the adjoining room. ‘Why the 
devil does a man take a vaca- 
tion!” Various assenting barks 
made up a matin-chorus from the 
dozen rooms of the one wing of 
Tarpon Inn which the storm of 
“19” had still left standing. 
It was “three o’clock in the morning,”’ 
but no one was singing about it. My 
boatman was merely trying to rouse 
me and was doing a thorough job. So 
I slipped into my clothes, theo- 
rizing on the Descent of Man, 
and in three minutes was en- 
compassing “Ham-and” with a 
speed and enthusiasm feasible 
only to an appetite tickled by 
hopes of fish to come, while in 
thirty minutes I was chugging 
out through the Pass into the 
Gulf of Mexico. 
called, “I’m 
Mr. Delano says: 

THE GLARE OF THE SUN IS SO INTENSE THAT 
ONE MUST WEAR ADHESIVE PLASTER OVER HIS 
LIPS AND NOSE TO AVOID SUNBURN. 
genus, land breed, practising the pro- 
fession of Aesculapius as a side line. 
Speaking of Doctor Sutton, .whose 
stories have appeared in so many of 
TWUDUIAUUUTOU CTU 
“Let me state that I 
make no forensic claims, but am writing 
these pages only in denial of a malicious 
story, which appeared in the February num- 
ber of Forest AND STREAM, and which was yan. 
An Answer to 
Dr. Sutton’s Article— 
and Incidentally Another 
Good Tarpon Story 
practice and clientele unequalled 
in the middle west: a clientele 
that drifts in, in floods, like the 
tides of the sea, filling the pockets 
in the rocky shores of the doctor’s 
life with a golden sandy settle- 
ment which makes smooth his 
path whether fishing in the storm- 
swept shores of the Gulf, whence 
he wrote “The Initiation of Ray- 
mond,” or hunting in the wilds 
of darkest Africa, whither he is 
now bound. Read him if you will 
but believe him not. 
1° him hyperbole is as familiar 
as the scalpel. He has a per- 
forming tongue which knows lin- 
guistics. He is the “King” in 
Kings English. He manipulates 
it like a Herman the Great; he opens 
its mystic doors like a Houdini. He 
probably gave “The Initiation of Ray- 
mond” into a dictaphone while shaving. 
To him an outing magazine is a 
spillway; a medical book—an 
overflow. He _ feels’ creative 
pains; he retires into seclusion 
for a febrile moment; he gives 
nativity to a thrilling fish story 
or a treatise on “The Entrology 
of the Stratum Spinosum,” with 
equal ease and emerges a well 
written by one Dr. R. L. Sutton, under 
Rises now let me state that 
I make no forensic claims 
but am writing these pages only 
in denial of a false and mali- 
cious story which appeared in 
the February number of Forest Aanp 
StrEAM and which was written by one 
Dr. R. L. Sutton under the caption of 
“The Initiation of Raymond.” 
Therein he made quite a readable 
tale of howI frater- 
nized with sharks 
by bathing off the 
rocky jettys of 
Port Aransas, and 
on being nosed by 
a mullet, did a 
mountain-goat act 
up the rocks to 
safety. 
Permit me to as- 
sert that the only 
shark I met on the 
trip was of the card 
the caption of ‘The Initiation of Raymond.’ ” 
AIVWVUUUUT UU UU UT 
the outing magazines, take his simples 
if you will, but soft-pedal his quill- 
craft. His Herculean body, his Phoe- 
bean countenance, his Solomonic wis- 
dom may have been productice of a 

ONESTY demands the above 
statements. I make them in 
spite of the fact that my good 
friend the doctor invited me to 
Port Aransas, loaned me his 
Stradivarian tackle, laboriously taught 
me its use, gave me a wonderful week 
in the tarpon grounds, and I love him 
still, but he is never still—so help me 
God! 
Brundy, the boat- 
an, speeded up 
ADIT 
THE GRANITE JET- 
TIES OF ARANSAS 
AND A BABY TAR- 
PON. 
JODIE HVT 
his little gas en- 
gine, took a look 
Page 140 
