issection of the eye proved it. No
fear a swordfish will not see a bait! He can see the boat and the bait a
long distance.

Doctor Riggin found no sperm in any of the male fish he dissected, which
was proof that swordfish spawn before coming to Catalina waters. They
are a warm-water fish, and probably head off the Japan current into some
warm, intersecting branch that leads to spawning-banks.

This was happy knowledge for me, because it will be good to know that
when old _Xiphius gladius_ is driven from Catalina waters he will be
roaming some other place of the Seven Seas, his great sickle fins
shining dark against the blue.

[Illustration: TIRED OUT--THE LAST SLOW HEAVE]

[Illustration: HAULED ABOARD WITH BLOCK AND TACKLE]

XI

SEVEN MARLIN SWORDFISH IN ONE DAY

San Clemente lies forty miles south of Santa Catalina, out in the
Pacific, open to wind and fog, scorched by sun, and beaten on every
shore by contending tides. Seen from afar, the island seems a bleak,
long, narrow strip of drab rock rising from a low west end to the
dignity of a mountain near the east end. Seen close at hand, it is still
barren, bleak, and drab; but it shows long golden slopes of wild oats;
looming, gray, lichen-colored crags, where the eagles perch; and rugged
deep canons, cactus-covered on the south side and on the other indented
by caves and caverns, and green with clumps of wild-lilac and
wild-cherry and arbor-vitae; and bare round domes where the wild goats
stand silhouetted against the blue sky.

This island is volcanic in origin and structure, and its great caves
have been made by blow-holes in hot lava. Erosion has weathered slope
and wall and crag. For the most part these slopes and walls are
exceedingly hard to climb. The goat trails are narrow and steep, the
rocks sharp and ragged, the cactus thick and treacherous. Many years ago
Mexicans placed goats on the island for the need of shipwrecked sailors,
and these goats have traversed the wild oat slopes until they are like
a network of trails. Every little space of grass has its crisscross of
goat trails.

I rested high up on a slope, in the lee of a rugged rock, all
rust-stained and gray-lichened, with a deep cactus-covered canon to my
left, the long, yellow, windy slope of wild oats to my right, and
beneath me the Pacific, majestic and grand, where the great white
rollers moved in graceful heaves along the blue. The shore-line, curved
by rounded gravelly beach