id of the harness, putting my
shoulders into the lift, I got the double line over the reel, only to
lose it. Every time the tuna was pulled near the boat he sheered off,
and it did not appear possible for me to prevent it. He got into a habit
of coming to the surface about thirty feet out, and hanging there, in
plain sight, as if he was cabled to the rocks of the ocean. Watching him
only augmented my trouble. It had ceased long ago to be fun or sport or
game. It was now a fight and it began to be torture. My hands were all
blisters, my thumbs raw. The respect I had for that tuna was great.

He plugged down mostly, but latterly he began to run off to each side,
to come to the surface, showing his broad green-silver side, and then he
weaved to and fro behind the boat, trying to get under it. Captain Dan
would have to run ahead to keep away from him. To hold what gain I had
on the tuna was at these periods almost unendurable. Where before I had
sweat, burned, throbbed, and ached, I now began to see red, to grow
dizzy, to suffer cramps and nausea and exceeding pain.

Three hours and a half showed the tuna slower, heavier, higher, easier.
He had taken us fifteen miles from where we had hooked him. He was
weakening, but I thought I was worse off than he was. Dan changed the
harness. It seemed to make more effort possible.

The floor under my feet was wet and slippery from the salt water
dripping off my reel. I could not get any footing. The bend of that rod
downward, the ceaseless tug, tug, tug, the fear of sharks, the
paradoxical loss of desire now to land the tuna, the change in my
feeling of elation and thrill to wonder, disgust, and utter weariness of
spirit and body--all these warned me that I was at the end of my tether,
and if anything could be done it must be quickly.

Relaxing, I took a short rest. Then nerving myself to be indifferent to
the pain, and yielding altogether to the brutal instinct this
tuna-fighting rouses in a fisherman, I lay back with might and main.
Eight times I had gotten the double line over the reel. On the ninth I
shut down, clamped with my thumbs, and froze there. The wire leader sung
like a telephone wire in the cold. I could scarcely see. My arms
cracked. I felt an immense strain that must break me in an instant.

Captain Dan reached the leader. Slowly he heaved. The strain upon me was
released. I let go the reel, threw off the drag, and stood up. There the
tuna was, the bronze-and-blue-