eturn late at night. Nobody knew where his
boatman was finding these fish. More than one boatman tried to follow
him, but in vain. Quite by accident it was discovered that he ran up on
the north side of the island, clear round the west end. When he was
discovered on the west side he at once steered toward Clemente Island,
evidently hoping to mislead his followers. This might have succeeded but
for the fact that both Bandini and Adams hooked big tuna before they had
gone a mile. Then the jig was up. That night Adams came in with a
one-hundred-and-twenty-and a one-hundred-and-thirty-six-pound tuna, and
Bandini brought the record for this season--one hundred and forty-nine
pounds.

Next day we were all out there on the west side, a few miles offshore.
The ocean appeared to be full of blackfish. They are huge, black marine
creatures, similar to a porpoise in movement, but many times larger, and
they have round, blunt noses that look like battering-rams. Some seemed
as big as gunboats, and when they heaved up on the swells we could see
the white stripes below the black. I was inclined to the belief that
this species was the orca, a whale-killing fish. Boatmen and deep-sea
men report these blackfish to be dangerous and had better be left alone.
They certainly looked ugly. We believed they were chasing tuna.

The channel that day contained more whales than I ever saw before at one
time. We counted six pairs in sight. I saw as many as four of the
funnel-like whale spouts of water on the horizon at once. It was very
interesting to watch these monsters of the deep. Once when we were all
on top of the boat we ran almost right upon two whales. The first
spouted about fifty feet away. The sea seemed to open up, a terrible
roar issued forth, then came a cloud of spray and rush of water. Then we
saw another whale just rising a few yards ahead. My hair stood up stiff.
Captain Dan yelled, leaped down to reverse the engine. The whale saw us
and swerved. Dan's action and the quickness of the whale prevented a
collision. As it was, I looked down in the clear water and saw the huge,
gleaming, gray body of the whale as he passed. That was another sight to
record in the book of memory. The great flukes of his tail moved with
surprising swiftness and the water bulged on the surface. Then we ran
close to the neighborhood of a school of whales, evidently feeding. They
would come up and blow, and then sound. To see a whale sound and then
raise h