THE WILD OATS SLOPE OF CLEMENTETHE WILD OATS SLOPE OF CLEMENTE
WHERE THE DEEP-BLUE SWELL BOOMS AGAINST THE LAVA WALL OF CLEMENTE ISLANDWHERE THE DEEP-BLUE SWELL BOOMS AGAINST THE LAVA WALL OF CLEMENTE ISLAND
Clemente Island is a mountain of cliffs and caves. It must be of volcanic origin, and when the lava rose, hot and boiling, great blow-holes formed, and hardened to make the caves. It is an exceedingly beautiful island. The fishing side is on the north, or lee, shore, where the water is very deep right off the rocks. There are kelp-beds along the shore, and the combination of deep water, kelp, and small fish is what holds the swordfish there in August and September. I have seen acres of flying-fish in the air at once, and great swarms of yellowtail, basking on the surface. The color of the water is indigo blue, clear as crystal. Always a fascinating thingfor me was to watch the water for new and different fish, strange marine creatures, life of some kind. And the watching was always rewarded. I have been close to schools of devilish blackfish, and I have watched great whales play all around me. What a spectacle to see a whale roll and dip his enormous body and bend and sound, lifting the huge, glistening flukes of his tail, wide as a house! I hate sharks and have caught many, both little and big. When you are watching for swordfish it is no fun to have a big shark break for your bait, throw the water, get your hook, and lift you from your seat. It happened often. But sometimes when I was sure it was a shark it was really a swordfish! I used to love to watch the sunfish leap, they are so round and glistening and awkward. I could tell one two miles away. The blue shark leaps often and he always turns clear over. You cannot mistake it. Nor can you mistake a swordfish when he breaks, even though you only see the splash. He makes two great sheets of water rise and fall. Probably all these fish leap to shake off the remoras. A remora is a parasite, a queer little fish, pale in color, because he probably lives inside the gills of the fish he preys upon, with the suckers on top of his head, arranged in a shield, ribbed like a washboard. This little fish is as mysterious as any creature of the sea. He is as swift as lightning. He can run over the body of a swordfish so quickly you can scarcely follow his movement, and at all times he is fast to the swordfish, holding with that flat sucker head. Mr. Holder wrote years ago that the remora sticks to a fish just to be carried along,as a means of travel, but I do not incline to this belief. We found many remoras inside the gills of swordfish, and their presence there was evidence of their blood-sucking tendencies. I used to search every swordfish for these remoras, and I would keep them in a bucket till we got to our anchorage. A school of tame rock-bass there, and tame yellowtail, and a few great sea-bass were always waiting for us—for our discarded bait or fish of some kind. But when I threw in a live remora, how these hungry fish did dart away! Life in the ocean is strange, complex, ferocious, and wonderful.
Al Shade keeps the only camp at Clemente. It is a clean, comfortable, delightful place. I have found no place where sleep is so easy, so sweet, so deep. Shade lives a lonely life there ten months in the year. And it is no wonder that when a fisherman arrives Al almost kills himself in his good humor and kindness and usefulness. Men who live lonely lives are always glad to see their fellow-men. But he loves Clemente Island. Who would not?
When I think of it many pictures come to mind—evening with the sea rolling high and waves curving shoreward in great dark ripples, that break and spread white and run up the strand. The sky is pale blue above, a green sheen low down, with white stars blinking. The promontories run down into the sea, sheer, black, rugged, bold, mighty. The surf is loud and deep, detonating, and the pebbles scream as the waves draw them down. Strange to realize that surf when on the morrow the sea will be like glass—not a wave nor a ripple under the gray fog!Wild and beautiful Clemente—the island of caves and cañons and cliffs—lilac and cactus and ice-plant and arbor-vitæ and ironwood, with the wild goats silhouetted dark against the bold sky-line!
There came that day of all days. I never believed Captain Dan, but now I shall never forget. The greatest day that ever befell me! I brought four swordfish to gaff and whipped another, the biggest one of the whole trip, and saw him tear away from the hook just at the last—in all, nine hours of strenuous hanging on to a rod.
I caught the first one before six o’clock, as the sun was rising red-gold, dazzling, glorious. He leaped in the sun eleven times. He weighed one hundred and eighty-seven.
After breakfast we sighted two swordfish on the smooth sea. Both charged the bait. I hooked one of these and he leaped twenty-three times. He weighed one hundred and sixty-eight.
Then off the east end we saw a big swordfish leap five times. We went out toward the open sea. But we never got anywhere near him. I had three strikes, one after another, when we were speeding the boat. Then we shut down and took to slow trolling. I saw another swordfish sail for my bait, and yelled. He shot off with the bait and his dorsal fin stuck out of the water. I hooked him. He leaped thirty-eight times. How the camera did snap during this fight! He weighed two hundred and ten.
I had a fierce strike on the way in. Too fast! We lost him.
“The sea’s alive with swordfish!” cried Captain Dan. “It’s the day!”
Then I awoke to my opportunity.
Round the east end, close to the great black bluff, where the swells pile up so thunderously, I spied the biggest purple fin I had ever seen. This fellow came to meet us—took my bait. I hooked at him, but did not hurt or scare him. Finally I pulled the hook out of him. While I was reeling in my line suddenly a huge purple shadow hove in sight. It was the swordfish—and certainly one of immense size—the hugest yet.
“He’s following the boat!” yelled Captain Dan, in great excitement.
So I saw, but I could not speak or yell. All was intense excitement on that boat. I jumped up on the stern, holding the bait Captain Dan had put on my hook. Then I paused to look. We all looked, spellbound. That was a sight of a lifetime. There he swam, the monster, a few feet under the surface, only a rod back of the boat. I had no calm judgment with which to measure his dimensions. I only saw that he was tremendous and beautiful. His great, yard-wide fins gleamed royal purple. And the purple strips crossed his silver sides. He glowed in the water, changed color like a chameleon, and drifted, floated after us. I thought of my brother Reddy—how he would have gloried in that sight! I thought of Dilg, of Bob Davis, of Professor Kellogg—other great fishermen, all in a flash. Indeed, though I gloated over my fortune, I was not selfish. Then I threw in the flying-fish bait. The swordfish loomed up, while my heart ceased to beat. There,in plain sight, he took the bait, as a trout might have taken a grasshopper. Slowly he sank. The line began to slip off the reel. He ceased to be a bright purple mass—grew dim—then vague—and disappeared.
I sat down, jammed the rod in the socket, and got ready. For the life of me I could not steady my legs.
“What’ll he weigh?” I gasped.
“O Lord! he looked twice as big as the big one you got,” replied Dan.
“Stand by with the cameras!” I said to my companions, and as they lined up, two on one side and one on the other, I began to strike at that fish with all my might and main. I must have had at least twelve powerful strikes before he began to wake up.
Then!
He came up, throwing the water in angry spouts. If he did not threaten the boat I was crazy. He began an exhibition that dwarfed any other I had seen, and it was so swift that I could scarcely follow him. Yet when I saw the line rise, and then the wonderful, long, shiny body, instinct with fury, shoot into the air, I yelled the number of the leap, and this was the signal for the camera-workers. They held the cameras close, without trying to focus, facing the fish, and they snapped when I yelled. It was all gloriously exciting. I could never describe that exhibition. I only know that he leaped clear forty-six times, and after a swift, hard hour for me he got away. Strangely, I was almost happy that he had shaken loose, for he had given such remarkable opportunities for pictures.
Captain Dan threw the wheel hard over and theboat turned. The swordfish, tired out and unconscious of freedom, was floating near the surface, a drifting blaze of purple. The boat sheered close to him. Captain Dan reached over with a gaff—and all but gaffed that swordfish before he sank too deep. Captain Dan was white with disappointment. That more than anything showed me his earnestness, what it all meant to him.
On the way in, for we had been led out a couple of miles, I saw a blue streak after my bait, and I was ready before the swordfish got to it. He struck viciously and I dared not let him have much line. When I hooked him he started out to sea at a clip that smoked the line off my reel. Captain Dan got the boat turned before the swordfish began to leap. Then it was almost a straightaway race. This fellow was a greyhound leaper. He did not churn the water, nor dash to and fro on the surface, but kept steadily leaping ahead. He cleared the water thirty-nine times before he gave up leaping. Then he sounded. The line went slack. I thought he was gone. Suddenly he showed again, in a white splash, and he was not half as far away as when he went down. Then I felt the pull on the line. It was heavy, for he had left a great bag in it. I endeavored to recover line, but it came in very slowly. The swordfish then threshed on the surface so that we could hear the water crack. But he did not leap again. He had gone mad with rage. He seemed to have no sense of direction. He went down again, only to rush up, still closer to us. Then it was plain he saw the nature of his foe. Splitting water like a swift motor-boat, he charged us.
I had a cold sensation, but was too excited to be afraid. Almost I forgot to reel in.
“He’s after us!” I said, grimly.
Captain Dan started the boat ahead fast. The swordfish got out of line with the boat. But he was close, and he made me think of the charging rhinoceros Dugmore photographed. And then I yelled for the cameras to be snapped. They all clicked—and then, when the swordfish shot close behind us, presenting the most magnificent picture, no one was ready!
As he passed I thought I saw the line round his body. Then he sounded and began to plug. He towed us six miles out to sea. I could not stop him. I had begun to weaken. My hands were sights. My back hurt. But I stayed with him. He felt like a log and I could not recover line. Captain Dan said it was because I was almost all in, but I did not think that. Presently this swordfish turned inshore and towed us back the six miles. By this time it was late and Iwasall in. But the swordfish did not seem nearer the boat. I got mad and found some reserve strength. I simply had to bring him to gaff. I pulled and pumped and wound until I was blind and could scarcely feel. My old blisters opened and bled. My left arm was dead. I seemed to have no more strength than a kitten. I could not lead the fish nor turn him. I had to drag and drag, inch by inch. It was agonizing. But finally I was encouraged by sight of him, a long, fine, game fellow. A hundred times I got the end of the double line near the leader in sight, only to lose it.
Seven o’clock passed. I had fought this swordfish nearly three hours. I could not last much longer. I rested a little, holding hard, and then began a last and desperate effort to bring him to gaff. I was absolutely dripping with sweat, and red flashes passed before my eyes, and queer dots. The last supreme pull—all I had left—brought the end of the leader to Captain Dan’s outstretched hand.
The swordfish came in broadside. In the clear water we saw him plainly, beautifully striped tiger that he was! And we all saw that he had not been hooked. He had been lassoed. In some way the leader had looped around him with the hook catching under the wire. No wonder it had nearly killed me to bring him to the boat, and surely I never would have succeeded had it not been for the record Captain Dan coveted. That was the strangest feature in all my wonderful Clemente experience—to see that superb swordfish looped in a noose of my long leader. He was without a scratch. It may serve to give some faint idea of the bewildering possibilities in the pursuit of this royal purple game of the Pacific.
My first day at Avalon, 1916, was one likely to be memorable among my fishing experiences.
The weather (August 2d) was delightful—smooth, rippling sea, no wind, clear sky and warm. The Sierra Nevada Mountains shone dark above the horizon.
A little before noon we passed my friend Lone Angler, who hailed us and said there was a big broadbill swordfish off in the steamer-course. We steered off in that direction.
There were sunfish and sharks showing all around. Once I saw a whale. The sea was glassy, with a long, heaving swell. Birds were plentiful in scattered groups.
We ran across a shark of small size and tried to get him to take a bait. He refused. A little later Captain Dan espied a fin, and upon running up we discovered the huge, brown, leathery tail and dorsal of a broadbill swordfish.
Captain Dan advised a long line out so that we could circle the fish from a distance and not scare him. I do not remember any unusual excitement. I was curious and interested. Remembering all Ihad heard about these fish, I did not anticipate getting a strike from him.
We circled him and drew the flying-fish bait so that he would swim near it. As it was, I had to reel in some. Presently we had the bait some twenty yards ahead of him. Then Captain Dan slowed down. The broadbill wiggled his tail and slid out of sight. Dan said he was going for my bait. But I did not believe so. Several moments passed. I had given up any little hope I might have had when I received a quick, strong, vibrating strike—different from any I had ever experienced. I suppose the strangeness was due to the shock he gave my line when he struck the bait with his sword. The line paid out unsteadily and slowly. I looked at Dan and he looked at me. Neither of us was excited nor particularly elated. I guess I did not realize what was actually going on.
I let him have about one hundred and fifty feet of line.
When I sat down to jam the rod-butt in the socket I had awakened to possibilities. Throwing on the drag and winding in until my line was taut, I struck hard—four times. He made impossible any more attempts at this by starting off on a heavy, irresistible rush. But he was not fast, or so it seemed to me. He did not get more than four hundred feet of line before we ran up on him. Presently he came to the surface to thresh around. He did not appear scared or angry. Probably he was annoyed at the pricking of the hook. But he kept moving, sometimes on the surface and sometimes beneath. I did not fight him hard, preferring to let him pullout the line, and then when he rested I worked on him to recover it. My idea was to keep a perpetual strain upon him.
I do not think I had even a hope of bringing this fish to the boat.
It was twelve o’clock exactly when I hooked him, and a quarter of an hour sped by. My first big thrill came when he leaped. This was a surprise. He was fooling round, and then, all of a sudden, he broke water clear. It was an awkward, ponderous action, and looked as if he had come up backward, like a bucking bronco. His size and his long, sinister sword amazed me and frightened me. It gave me a cold sensation to realize I was hooked to a huge, dangerous fish. But that in itself was a new kind of thrill. No boatman fears a Marlin as he does the true broadbill swordfish.
My second thrill came when the fish lunged on the surface in a red foam. If I had hooked him so he bled freely there was a chance to land him! This approach to encouragement, however, was short-lived. He went down, and if I had been hooked to a submarine I could scarcely have felt more helpless. He sounded about five hundred feet and then sulked. I had the pleasant task of pumping him up. This brought the sweat out upon me and loosened me up. I began to fight him harder. And it seemed that as I increased the strain he grew stronger and a little more active. Still there was not any difference in his tactics. I began to get a conception of the vitality and endurance of a broadbill in contrast with the speed and savageness of his brother fish, the Marlin, or roundbill.
At two o’clock matters were about the same. I was not tired, but certainly the fish was not tired, either. He came to the surface just about as much as he sounded. I had no difficulty at all in getting back the line he took, at least all save a hundred feet or so. When I tried to lead him or lift him—then I got his point of view. He would not budge an inch. There seemed nothing to do but let him work on the drag, and when he had pulled out a few hundred feet of line we ran up on him and I reeled in the line. Now and then I put all the strain I could on the rod and worked him that way.
At three o’clock I began to get tired. My hands hurt. And I concluded I had been rather unlucky to start on a broadbill at the very beginning.
From that time he showed less frequently, and, if anything, he grew slower and heavier. I felt no more rushes. And along about this time I found I could lead him somewhat. This made me begin to work hard. Yet, notwithstanding, I had no hope of capturing the fish. It was only experience.
Captain Dan kept saying: “Well, you wanted to hook up with a broadbill! Now how do you like it?” He had no idea I would ever land him. Several times I asked him to give an opinion as to the size of the swordfish, but he would not venture that until he had gotten a good close view of him.
At four o’clock I made the alarming discovery that the great B-Ocean reel was freezing, just as my other one had frozen on my first swordfish the year previous. Captain Dan used language. He threw up his hands. He gave up. But I did not.
“Dan, see here,” I said. “We’ll run up on him,throw off a lot of slack line, then cut it and tie it to another reel!”
“We might do that. But it’ll disqualify the fish,” he replied.
Captain Dan, like all the boatmen at Avalon, has fixed ideas about the Tuna Club and its records and requirements. It is all right, I suppose, for a club to have rules, and not count or credit an angler who breaks a rod or is driven to the expedient I had proposed. But I do not fish for clubs or records. I fish for the fun, the excitement, the thrill of the game, and I would rather let my fish go than not. So I said:
“We’ll certainly lose the fish if we don’t change reels. I am using the regulation tackle, and to my mind the more tackle we use, provided we land the fish, the more credit is due us. It is not an easy matter to change reels or lines or rods with a big fish working all the time.”
Captain Dan acquiesced, but told me to try fighting him a while with the light drag and the thumb-brake. So far only the heavy drag had frozen. I tried Dan’s idea, to my exceeding discomfort; and the result was that the swordfish drew far away from us. Presently the reel froze solid. The handle would not turn. But with the drag off the spool ran free.
Then we ran away from the fish, circling and letting out slack line. When we came to the end of the line we turned back a little, and with a big slack we took the risk of cutting the line and tying it on the other reel. We had just got this done when the line straightened tight! I wound in about twelvehundred feet of line and was tired and wet when I had gotten in all I could pull. This brought us to within a couple of hundred feet of our quarry. Also it brought us to five o’clock. Five hours!... I began to have queer sensations—aches, pains, tremblings, saggings. Likewise misgivings!
About this period I determined to see how close to the boat I could pull him. I worked. The word “worked” is not readily understood until a man has tried to pull a big broadbill close to the boat. I pulled until I saw stars and my bones cracked. Then there was another crack. The rod broke at the reel seat! And the reel seat was bent. Fortunately the line could still pay out. And I held the tip while Dan pried and hammered the reel off the broken butt on to another one. Then he put the tip in that butt, and once more I had to reel in what seemed miles and miles of line.
Five thirty! It seemed around the end of the world for me. We had drifted into a tide-rip about five miles east of Avalon, and in this rough water I had a terrible time trying to hold my fish. When I discovered that I could hold him—and therefore that he was playing out—then there burst upon me the dazzling hope of actually bringing him to gaff. It is something to fight a fish for more than five hours without one single hope of his capture. I had done that. And now, suddenly, to be fired with hope gave me new strength and spirit to work. The pain in my hands was excruciating. I was burning all over; wet and slippery, and aching in every muscle. These next few minutes seemed longer than all the hours. I found that to put the old strain onthe rod made me blind with pain. There was no fun, no excitement, no thrill now. As I labored I could not help marveling at the strange, imbecile pursuits of mankind. Here I was in an agony, absolutely useless. Why did I keep it up? I could not give up, and I concluded I was crazy.
I conceived the most unreasonable hatred for that poor swordfish that had done nothing to me and that certainly would have been justified in ramming the boat.
To my despair the fish sounded deep, going down and down. Captain Dan watched the line. Finally it ceased to pay out.
“Pump him up!” said Dan.
This was funny. It was about as funny as death.
I rested awhile and meditated upon the weakness of the flesh. The thing most desirable and beautiful in all the universe was rest. It was so sweet to think of that I was hard put to it to keep from tossing the rod overboard. There was something so desperately trying and painful in this fight with a broadbill. At last I drew a deep, long breath, and, with a pang in my breast and little stings all over me, I began to lift on him. He was at the bottom of the ocean. He was just as unattainable as the bottom of the ocean. But there are ethics of a sportsman!
Inch by inch and foot by foot I pumped up this live and dragging weight. I sweat, I panted, I whistled, I bled—and my arms were dead, and my hands raw and my heart seemed about to burst.
Suddenly Captain Dan electrified me.
“There’s the end of the double line!” he yelled.
Unbelievable as it was, there the knot in the end of the short six feet of double line showed at the surface. I pumped and I reeled inch by inch.
A long dark object showed indistinctly, wavered as the swells rose, then showed again. As I strained at the rod so I strained my eyes.
“I see the leader!” yelled Dan, in great excitement.
I saw it, too, and I spent the last ounce of strength left in me. Up and up came the long, dark, vague object.
“You’ve got him licked!” exclaimed Dan. “Not a wag left in him!”
It did seem so. And that bewildering instant saw the birth of assurance in me. I was going to get him! That was a grand instant for a fisherman. I could have lifted anything then.
The swordfish became clear to my gaze. He was a devilish-looking monster, two feet thick across the back, twelve feet long over all, and he would have weighed at the least over four hundred pounds. And I had beaten him! That was there to be seen. He had none of the beauty and color of the roundbill swordfish. He was dark, almost black, with huge dorsal and tail, and a wicked broad sword fully four feet long. What terrified me was his enormous size and the deadly look of him. I expected to see him rush at the boat.
Watching him thus, I reveled in my wonderful luck. Up to this date there had been only three of these rare fish caught in twenty-five years of Avalon fishing. And this one was far larger than those that had been taken.
“Lift him! Closer!” called Captain Dan. “In two minutes I’ll have a gaff in him!”
I made a last effort. Dan reached for the leader.
Then the hook tore out.
My swordfish, without a movement of tail or fin, slowly sank—to vanish in the blue water.
After resting my blistered hands for three days, which time was scarcely long enough to heal them, I could not resist the call of the sea.
We went off Seal Rocks and trolled about five miles out. We met a sand-dabber who said he had seen a big broadbill back a ways. So we turned round. After a while I saw a big, vicious splash half a mile east, and we made for it. Then I soon espied the fish.
We worked around him awhile, but he would not take a barracuda or a flying-fish.
It was hard to keep track of him, on account of rough water. Soon he went down.
Then a little later I saw what Dan called a Marlin. He had big flippers, wide apart. I took him for a broadbill.
We circled him, and before he saw a bait he leaped twice, coming about half out, with belly toward us. He looked huge, but just how big it was impossible to say.
After a while he came up, and we circled him. As the bait drifted round before him—twenty yards or more off—he gave that little wiggle of the tail sickle, and went under. I waited. I had given up hope when I felt him hit the bait. Then he ran off, pretty fast. I let him have a long line. ThenI sat down and struck him. He surged off, and we all got ready to watch him leap. But he did not show.
He swam off, sounded, came up, rolled around, went down again. But we did not get a look at him. He fought like any other heavy swordfish.
In one and one-half hours I pulled him close to the boat, and we all saw him. But I did not get a good look at him as he wove to and fro behind the boat.
Then he sounded.
I began to work on him, and worked harder. He seemed to get stronger all the time.
“He feels like a broadbill, I tell you,” I said to Captain Dan.
Dan shook his head, yet all the same he looked dubious.
Then began a slow, persistent, hard battle between me and the fish, the severity of which I did not realize at the time. In hours like those time has wings. My hands grew hot. They itched, and I wanted to remove the wet gloves. But I did not, and sought to keep my mind off what had been half-healed blisters. Neither the fish nor I made any new moves, it all being plug on his part and give and take on mine. Slowly and doggedly he worked out toward the sea, and while the hours passed, just as persistently he circled back.
Captain Dan came to stand beside me, earnestly watching the rod bend and the line stretch. He shook his head.
“That’s a big Marlin and you’ve got him foul-hooked,” he asserted. This statement was made atthe end of three hours and more. I did not agree. Dan and I often had arguments. He always tackled me when I was in some such situation as this—for then, of course, he had the best of it. My brother Rome was in the boat that day, an intensely interested observer. He had not as yet hooked a swordfish.
“It’s a German submarine!” he declared.
My brother’s wife and the other ladies with us on board were inclined to favor my side; at least they were sorry for the fish and said he must be very big.
“Dan, I could tell a foul-hooked fish,” I asserted, positively. “This fellow is too alive—too limber. He doesn’t sag like a dead weight.”
“Well, if he’s not foul-hooked, then you’re all in,” replied the captain.
Cheerful acquiescence is a desirable trait in any one, especially an angler who aspires to things, but that was left out in the ordering of my complex disposition. However, to get angry makes a man fight harder, and so it was with me.
At the end of five hours Dan suggested putting the harness on me. This contrivance, by the way, is a thing of straps and buckles, and its use is to fit over an angler’s shoulders and to snap on the rod. It helps him lift the fish, puts his shoulders more into play, rests his arms. But I had never worn one. I was afraid of it.
“Suppose he pulls me overboard, with that on!” I exclaimed. “He’ll drown me!”
“We’ll hold on to you,” replied Dan, cheerily, as he strapped it around me.
Later it turned out that I had exactly the rightview concerning this harness, for Dustin Farnum was nearly pulled overboard and—But I have not space for that story here. My brother Rome wants to write that story, anyhow, because it is so funny, he says.
On the other hand, the fact soon manifested itself to me that I could lift a great deal more with said harness to help. The big fish began to come nearer and also he began to get mad. Here I forgot the pain in my hands. I grew enthusiastic. And foolishly I bragged. Then I lifted so hard that I cracked the great Conroy rod.
Dan threw up his hands. He quit, same as he quit the first day out, when I hooked the broadbill and the reel froze.
“Disqualified fish, even if you ketch him—which you won’t,” he said, dejectedly.
“Crack goes thirty-five dollars!” exclaimed my brother. “Sure is funny, brother, how you can decimate good money into the general atmosphere!”
If there really is anything fine in the fighting of a big fish, which theory I have begun to doubt, certainly Captain Dan and Brother R. C. did not know it.
Remarks were forthcoming from me, I am ashamed to state, that should not have been. Then I got Dan to tie splints on the rod, after which I fought my quarry some more. The splints broke. Dan had to bind the cracked rod with heavy pieces of wood and they added considerable weight to what had before felt like a ton.
The fish had been hooked at eleven o’clock and it was now five. We had drifted or been pulled intothe main channel, where strong currents and a choppy sea made the matter a pretty serious and uncomfortable one. Here I expended all I had left in a short and furious struggle to bring the fish up, if not to gaff, at least so we could see what he looked like. How strange and unfathomable a feeling this mystery of him gave rise to! If I could only see him once, then he could get away and welcome. Captain Dan, in anticipation of a need of much elbow room in that cockpit, ordered my brother and the ladies to go into the cabin or up on top. And they all scrambled up and lay flat on the deck-roof, with their heads over, watching me. They had to hold on some, too. In fact, they were having the time of their lives.
My supreme effort brought the fish within the hundredth foot length of line—then my hands and my back refused any more.
“Dan, here’s the great chance you’ve always hankered for!” I said. “Now let’s see you pull him right in!”
And I passed him the rod and got up. Dan took it with the pleased expression of a child suddenly and wonderfully come into possession of a long-unattainable toy. Captain Dan was going to pull that fish right up to the boat. He was! Now Dan is big—he weighs two hundred; he has arms and hands like the limbs of a Vulcan. Perhaps Dan had every reason to believe he would pull the fish right up to the boat. But somehow I knew that he would not.
My fish, perhaps feeling a new and different and mightier hand at the rod, showed how he liked it bya magnificent rush—the greatest of the whole fight—and he took about five hundred feet of line.
Dan’s expression changed as if by magic.
“Steer the boat! Port! Port!” he yelled.
Probably I could not run a boat right with perfectly fresh and well hands, and with my lacerated and stinging ones I surely made a mess of it. This brought language from my boatman—well, to say the least, quite disrespectable. Fortunately, however, I got the boat around and we ran down on the fish. Dan, working with long, powerful sweeps of the rod, got the line back and the fish close. The game began to look great to me. All along I had guessed this fish to be a wonder; and now I knew it.
Hauling him close that way angered him. He made another rush, long and savage. The line smoked off that reel. Dan’s expression was one of utmost gratification to me. A boatman at last cornered—tied up to a whale of a fish!
Somewhere out there a couple of hundred yards the big fish came up and roared on the surface. I saw only circling wake and waves like those behind a speedy motor-boat. But Dan let out a strange shout, and up above the girls screamed, and brother Rome yelled murder or something. I gathered that he had a camera.
“Steady up there!” I called out. “If you fall overboard it’s good night!... For we want this fish!”
I had all I could do. Dan would order me to steer this way and that—to throw out the clutch—to throw it in. Still I was able to keep track of events. This fish made nineteen rushes in the succeedinghalf-hour. Never for an instant did Captain Dan let up. Assuredly during that time he spent more force on the fish than I had in six hours.
The sea was bad, the boat was rolling, the cockpit was inches deep under water many a time. I was hard put to it to stay at my post; and what saved the watchers above could not be explained by me.
“Mebbe I can hold him now—a little,” called Dan once, as he got the hundred-foot mark over the reel. “Strap the harness on me!”
I fastened the straps round Dan’s broad shoulders. His shirt was as wet as if he had fallen overboard. Maybe some of that wet was spray. His face was purple, his big arms bulging, and he whistled as he breathed.
“Good-by, Dan. This will be a fitting end for a boatman,” I said, cheerfully, as I dove back to the wheel.
At six o’clock our fish was going strong and Dan was tiring fast. He had, of course, worked too desperately hard.
Meanwhile the sun sank and the sea went down. All the west was gold and red, with the towers of Church Rock spiring the horizon. A flock of gulls were circling low, perhaps over a school of tuna. The white cottages of Avalon looked mere specks on the dark island.
Captain Dan had the swordfish within a hundred feet of the boat and was able to hold him. This seemed hopeful. It looked now just a matter of a little more time. But Dan needed a rest.
I suggested that my brother come down and take a hand in the final round, which I frankly confessed was liable to be hell.
FOUR MARLIN SWORDFISH IN ONE DAYFOUR MARLIN SWORDFISH IN ONE DAY
A BIG SAILFISH BREAKING WATERA BIG SAILFISH BREAKING WATER
“Not on your life!” was the prompt reply. “I want to begin on alittleswordfish!... Why, that—that fish hasn’t waked up yet!”
And I was bound to confess there seemed to me to be a good deal of sense in what he said.
“Dan, I’ll take the rod—rest you a bit—so you can finish him,” I offered.
The half-hour Dan recorded as my further work on this fish will always be a dark and poignant blank in my fishing experience. When it was over twilight had come and the fish was rolling and circling perhaps fifty yards from the boat.
Here Dan took the rod again, and with the harness on and fresh gloves went at the fish in grim determination.
Suddenly the moon sailed out from behind a fog-bank and the sea was transformed. It was as beautiful as it was lucky for us.
By Herculean effort Dan brought the swordfish close. If any angler doubts the strength of a twenty-four thread line his experience is still young. That line was a rope, yet it sang like a banjo string.
Leaning over the side, with two pairs of gloves on, I caught the double line, and as I pulled and Dan reeled the fish came up nearer. But I could not see him. Then I reached the leader and held on as for dear life.
“I’ve got the leader!” I yelled. “Hurry, Dan!”
Dan dropped the rod and reached for his gaff. But he had neglected to unhook the rod from the harness, and as the fish lunged and tore the leaderaway from me there came near to being disaster. However, Dan got straightened out and anchored in the chair and began to haul away again. It appeared we had the fish almost done, but he was so big that a mere movement of his tail irresistibly drew out the line.
Then the tip of the rod broke off short just even with the splints and it slid down the line out of sight. Dan lowered the rod so most of the strain would come on the reel, and now he held like grim death.
“Dan, if we don’t make any more mistakes we’ll get that fish!” I declared.
The sea was almost calm now, and moon-blanched so that we could plainly see the line. Despite Dan’s efforts, the swordfish slowly ran off a hundred feet more of line. Dan groaned. But I yelled with sheer exultation. For, standing up on the gunwale, I saw the swordfish. He had come up. He was phosphorescent—a long gleam of silver—and he rolled in the unmistakable manner of a fish nearly beaten.
Suddenly he headed for the boat. It was a strange motion. I was surprised—then frightened. Dan reeled in rapidly. The streak of white gleamed closer and closer. It was like white fire—a long, savage, pointed shape.
“Look! Look!” I yelled to those above. “Don’t miss it!... Oh, great!”
“He’s charging the boat!” hoarsely shouted Dan.
“He’s all in!” yelled my brother.
I jumped into the cockpit and leaned over the gunwale beside the rod. Then I grasped the line, letting it slip through my hands. Dan wound inwith fierce energy. I felt the end of the double line go by me, and at this I let out another shout to warn Dan. Then I had the end of the leader—a good strong grip—and, looking down, I saw the clear silver outline of the hugest fish I had ever seen short of shark or whale. He made a beautiful, wild, frightful sight. He rolled on his back. Roundbill or broadbill, he had an enormous length of sword.
“Come, Dan—we’ve got him!” I panted.
Dan could not, dare not get up then.
The situation was perilous. I saw how Dan clutched the reel, with his big thumbs biting into the line. I did my best. My sight failed me for an instant. But the fish pulled the leader through my hands. My brother leaped down to help—alas, too late!
“Let go, Dan! Give him line!”
But Dan was past that. Afterward he said his grip was locked. He held, and not another foot did the swordfish get. Again I leaned over the gunwale. I saw him—a monster—pale, wavering. His tail had an enormous spread. I could no longer see his sword. Almost he was ready to give up.
Then the double line snapped. I fell back in the boat and Dan fell back in the chair.
Nine hours!
In the winter of 1916 I persuaded Captain Sam Johnson, otherwise famous as Horse-mackerel Sam, of Seabright, New Jersey, to go to Long Key with me and see if the two of us as a team could not outwit those illusive and strange sailfish of the Gulf Stream.
Sam and I have had many adventures going down to sea. At Seabright we used to launch a Seabright skiff in the gray gloom of early morning and shoot the surf, and return shoreward in the afternoon to ride a great swell clear till it broke on the sand. When I think of Sam I think of tuna—those torpedoes of the ocean. I have caught many tuna with Sam, and hooked big ones, but these giants are still roving the blue deeps. Once I hooked a tuna off Sandy Hook, out in the channel, and as I was playing him theLusitaniabore down the channel. Like a mountain she loomed over us. I felt like an atom looking up and up. Passengers waved down to us as the tuna bent my rod. The great ship passed on in a seething roar—passed on to her tragic fate. We rode the heavy swells she lifted—and my tuna got away.
Sam Johnson is from Norway. His ancestors lived by fishing. Sam knows and loves the sea. He has been a sailor before the mast, but he is more fisherman than sailor. He is a stalwart man, with an iron, stern, weather-beaten face and keen blue eyes, and he has an arm like the branch of an oak. For many years he has been a market fisherman at Seabright, where on off days he pursued the horse-mackerel for the fun of it, and which earned him his name. Better than any man I ever met Sam knows the sea; he knows fish, he knows boats and engines. And I have reached a time in my experience of fishing where I want that kind of a boatman.
Sam and I went after sailfish at Long Key and we got them. But I do not consider the experience conclusive. If it had not been for my hard-earned knowledge of the Pacific swordfish, and for Sam’s keenness on the sea, we would not have been so fortunate. We established the record, but, what is more important, we showed what magnificent sport is possible. This advent added much to the attractiveness of Long Key for me. And Long Key was attractive enough before.
Sailfish had been caught occasionally at Long Key, during every season. But I am inclined to believe that, in most instances, the capture of sailfish had been accident—mere fisherman’s luck. Anglers have fished along the reef and inside, trolling with heavy tackle for anything that might strike, and once in a while a sailfish has somehow hooked himself. Mr. Schutt tells of hooking one on a Wilson spoon, and I know of another anglerwho had this happen. I know of one gentleman who told me he hooked a fish that he supposed was a barracuda, and while he was fighting this supposed barracuda he was interested in the leaping of a sailfish near his boat. His boatman importuned him to hurry in the barracuda so there would be a chance to go after the leaping sailfish. But it turned out that the sailfish was on his hook. Another angler went out with heavy rod, the great B-Ocean reel, and two big hooks (which is an outfit suitable only for large tuna or swordfish), and this fellow hooked a sailfish which had no chance and was dead in less than ten minutes. A party of anglers were out on the reef, fishing for anything, and they decided to take a turn outside where I had been spending days after sailfish. Scarcely had these men left the reef when five sailfish loomed up and all of them, with that perversity and capriciousness which makes fish so incomprehensible, tried to climb on board the boat. One, a heavy fish, did succeed in hooking himself and getting aboard. I could multiply events of this nature, but this is enough to illustrate my point—that there is a vast difference between several fishermen out of thousands bringing in several sailfish in one season and one fisherman deliberately going after sailfish with light tackle and eventually getting them.
It is not easy. On the contrary, it is extremely hard. It takes infinite patience, and very much has to be learned that can be learned only by experience. But it is magnificent sport and worth any effort. It makes tarpon-fishing tame by comparison. Tarpon-fishing is easy. Anybody can catch a tarponby going after him. But not every fisherman can catch a sailfish. One fisherman out of a hundred will get his sailfish, but only one out of a thousand will experience the wonder and thrill and beauty of the sport.
Sailfishing is really swordfishing, and herein lies the secret of my success at Long Key. I am not satisfied that the sailfish I caught were all Marlin and brothers to the Pacific Marlin. The Atlantic fish are very much smaller than those of the Pacific, and are differently marked and built. Yet they are near enough alike to be brothers.
There are three species that I know of in southern waters. TheHistiophorus, the sailfish about which I am writing and of which descriptions follow. There is another species,Tetrapturus albidus, that is not uncommon in the Gulf Stream. It is my impression that this species is larger. The Indians, with whom I fished in the Caribbean, tell of a great swordfish—in Spanish theAguja de casta, and this species must be related toXiphias, the magnificent flatbilled swordfish of the Atlantic and Pacific.
The morning of my greatest day with sailfish I was out in the Gulf Stream, seven miles offshore, before the other fishermen had gotten out of bed. We saw the sun rise ruddy and bright out of the eastern sea, and we saw sailfish leap as if to welcome the rising of the lord of day. A dark, glancing ripple wavered over the water; there was just enough swell to make seeing fish easy.
I was using a rod that weighed nine ounces over all, and twelve hundred feet of fifteen-thread line.I was not satisfied then that the regular light outfit of the Tuna Club, such as I used at Avalon, would do for sailfish. No. 9 breaks of its own weight. And I have had a sailfish run off three hundred yards of line and jump all the time he was doing it. Besides, nobody knows how large these sailfish grow. I had hold of one that would certainly have broken my line if he had not thrown the hook.
On this memorable day I had scarcely trolled half a mile out into the Stream before I felt that inexplicable rap at my bait which swordfish and sailfish make with their bills. I jumped up and got ready. I saw a long bronze shape back of my bait. Then I saw and felt him take hold. He certainly did not encounter the slightest resistance in running out my line. He swam off slowly. I never had Sam throw out the clutch and stop the boat until after I had hooked the fish. I wanted the boat to keep moving, so if I did get a chance to strike at a fish it would be with a tight line. These sailfish are wary and this procedure is difficult. If the fish had run off swiftly I would have struck sooner. Everything depends on how he takes the bait. This fellow took fifty feet of line before I hooked him.
He came up at once, and with two-thirds of his body out of the water he began to skitter toward us. He looked silver and bronze in the morning light. There was excitement on board. Sam threw out the clutch. My companions dove for the cameras, and we all yelled. The sailfish came skittering toward us. It was a spectacular and thrilling sight. He was not powerful enough to rise clear on his tail and do the famous trick of the Pacific swordfish—“walkingon the water.” But he gave a mighty good imitation. Then before the cameras got in a snap he went down. And he ran, to come up far astern and begin to leap. I threw off the drag and yelled, “Go!”