lver Canon just on a last forlorn hope. The sea
was rippling white and blue, with a good breeze. No whales showed. We
left Avalon about one o'clock, ran out five miles, and began to fish.
Our methods had undergone some change. We used a big kite out on three
hundred yards of line; we tied this line on my leader, and we tightened
the drag on the reel so that it took a nine-pound pull to start the line
off. This seemed a fatal procedure, but I was willing to try anything.
My hope of getting a strike was exceedingly slim. Instead of a
flying-fish for bait we used a good-sized smelt, and we used hooks big
and strong and sharp as needles.

We had not been out half an hour when Dan left the wheel and jumped up
on the gunwale to look at something.

"What do you see?" I asked, eagerly.

He was silent a moment. I dare say he did not want to make any mistakes.
Then he jumped back to the wheel.

"School of tuna!" he boomed.

I stood up and looked in the direction indicated, but I could not see
them. Dan said only the movement on the water could be seen. Good long
swells were running, rather high, and presently I did see tuna showing
darkly bronze in the blue water. They vanished. We had to turn the boat
somewhat, and it began to appear that we would have difficulty in
putting the bait into the school. So it turned out. We were in the wrong
quarter to use the wind. I saw the school of tuna go by, perhaps two
hundred feet from the boat. They were traveling fast, somewhat under the
surface, and were separated from one another. They were big tuna, but
nothing near the size of those that had wrecked my tackle and hopes.
Captain Dan said they were hungry, hunting fish. To me they appeared
game, swift, and illusive.

We lost sight of them. With the boat turned fairly into the west wind
the kite soared, pulling hard, and my bait skipped down the slopes of
the swells and up over the crests just like a live, leaping little fish.
It was my opinion that the tuna were running inshore. Dan said they were
headed west. We saw nothing of them. Again the old familiar
disappointment knocked at my heart, with added bitterness of past
defeat. Dan scanned the sea like a shipwrecked mariner watching for a
sail.

"I see them!... There!" he called. "They're sure traveling fast."

That stimulated me with a shock. I looked and looked, but I could not
see the darkened water. Moments passed, during which I stood up,
watching my bait as it slipped ov