sight. At two forty Captain Dan sighted a large, dark,
rippling patch on the water. We ran over closer.

"School of tuna!" exclaimed the captain, with excitement. "Big fish! Oh,
for some wind now to fly the kite!"

"There's another school," said my brother, R. C., and he pointed to a
second darkly gleaming spot on the smooth sea.

"I've spotted one, too!" I shouted.

"The ocean's alive with tuna--big tuna!" boomed Captain Dan. "Here we
are alone, blue-button fish everywhere--and no wind."

"We'll watch the fish and wait for wind," I said.

This situation may not present anything remarkable to most fishermen.
But we who knew the game realized at once that this was an experience of
a lifetime. We counted ten schools of tuna near at hand, and there were
so many farther on that they seemed to cover the sea.

"Boys," said Captain Dan, "here's the tuna we heard were at Anacapa
Island last week. The Japs netted hundreds of tons. They're working
southeast, right in the middle of the channel, and haven't been inshore
at all. It's ninety miles to Anacapa. Some traveling!... That school
close to us is the biggest school I ever saw and I believe they're the
biggest fish."

"Run closer to them," I said to him.

We ran over within fifty feet of the edge of the school, stopped the
boat, and all climbed up on top of the deck.

Then we beheld a spectacle calculated to thrill the most phlegmatic
fisherman. It simply enraptured me, and I think I am still too close to
it to describe it well. The dark-blue water, heaving in great, low, lazy
swells, showed a roughened spot of perhaps two acres in extent. The sun,
shining over our shoulders, caught silvery-green gleams of fish,
flashing wide and changing to blue. Long, round, bronze backs deep under
the surface, caught the sunlight. Blue fins and tails, sharp and curved,
like sabers, cleared the water. Here a huge tuna would turn on his side,
gleaming broad and bright, and there another would roll on the surface,
breaking water like a tarpon with a slow, heavy souse.

"Look at the leaders," said Captain Dan. "I'll bet they're
three-hundred-pound fish."

I saw then that the school, lazy as they seemed, were slowly following
the leaders, rolling and riding the swells. These leaders threw up
surges and ridges on the surface. They plowed the water.

"What'd happen if we skipped a flying-fish across the water in front of
those leaders?" I asked Captain Dan.

He threw up his hands.