ong, 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 in
with 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!

V

SAILFISH--THE ATLANTIC BROTHER TO THE PACIFIC SWORDFISH

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 the _Lusitania_ bore down the channel. Like a mountain she
loomed over us. I felt like an atom looking up and up. Passengers waved
down to