with heavy slap of gills.

Water deluged the boat, but missed me. I actually smelled that fish, he
was so close. What must surely have been terror for me, had I actually
seen and realized the peril, gave place to flashing thought of the one
and great chance for a wonderful picture of a big swordfish close to the
boat. That gripped me. While I changed the focus on my camera I missed
seeing the next two jumps. But I heard the heavy sousing splashes and
the yells of Dan and R. C., with the shrill screams of the ladies.

When I did look up to try to photograph the next leap of the swordfish I
saw him, close at hand, monstrous and animated, in a surging,
up-sweeping splash. I heard the hiss of the boiling foam. He lunged
away, churning the water like a sudden whirl of a ferryboat wheel, and
then he turned squarely at us. Even then Captain Dan's yell did not warn
us. I felt rather than saw that he had put on full speed ahead. The
swordfish dove toward us, went under, came up in a two-sheeted white
splash, and rose high and higher, to fall with a cracking sound. Like a
flash of light he shot up again, and began wagging his huge
purple-barred body, lifting himself still higher, until all but his tail
stood ponderously above the surface; and then, incredibly powerful, he
wagged and lashed upright in a sea of hissing foam, mouth open wide,
blood streaming down his wet sides and flying in red spray from his
slapping gills--a wonderful and hair-raising spectacle. He stayed up
only what seemed a moment. During this action and when he began again to
leap and smash toward us, I snapped my camera three times upon him. But
I missed seeing some of his greatest leaps because I had to look at the
camera while operating it.

"Get back!" yelled Dan, hoarsely.

I was so excited I did not see the danger of the swordfish coming
aboard. But Captain Dan did. He swept the girls back into the cabin
doorway, and pushed Mrs. R. C. into a back corner of the cockpit.
Strange it seemed to me how pale Dan was!

The swordfish made long, swift leaps right at the boat. On the last he
hit us on the stern, but too low to come aboard. Six feet closer to us
would have landed that huge, maddened swordfish right in the cockpit!
But he thumped back, and the roar of his mighty tail on the water so
close suddenly appalled me. I seemed to grasp how near he had come
aboard at the same instant that I associated the power of his tail with
a havoc he would have exe