The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries Part 21

"I certainly should, Father," the boy said gratefully, "if it wouldn't be spoiling your fun."

"Not a bit, my boy," was the kindly reply, "I've been looking forward to teaching you something about real fishing. Beside which, I have an idea that you and I will have enough to talk about to keep us going for a good while. I'd like to take you up to the club-house now, but you'll probably want to get back home, and we'll go along together. I can get the boatman to look after notification at the club, and all that sort of thing."

"I'll wait, if you like."

"No; Vincente knows all the ropes as well as I do. I judge from your letters that you've enjoyed running around the way you have?"

"I wish you'd been along, Father," the boy replied. "I've had a bully time. I never expected anything like it when I got aboard the _Gull_."

"I didn't either," said Major Dare dryly; "if I had thought of the possibility of the ship being rammed by a whale, you'd never have put a foot on her deck. But Captain Murchison said that whales were entirely harmless, and so I let you go."

"But, Father, you should have seen the way the old whale charged"--and the lad plunged into the thick of the story. He was fairly out of breath when they reached the little cottage Major Dare had rented for a couple of months, but the boy was by no means out of material, and nothing short of an absolute command could keep him silent long enough to eat his lunch. In the afternoon he unpacked his trunk, revealing little quaint articles he had picked up on his travels as gifts for the various members of the family. But the excitement of home-coming had tired the boy, and quite early in the evening he found himself getting sleepy, so that not long after his little sister had been snugly tucked up, Colin announced his readiness to go to bed, on the ground that he was to get up early the next day, as he was going tuna-fishing.

The morning broke hot and hazy. The gray-green of the foliage on the mountains had a purple tinge in the early morning light, and the sea took on a mother-of-pearl gleam behind its amethyst, as it reflected the changing hues of the roseate sunrise. Over San Antonio and San Jacinto the sun rose gloriously, and in the freshness of the morning air the giant flying-fish of the Pacific leaped and gleamed across the mirror-smooth sea.

Colin drew a long breath and expanded his lungs to the full, as though he could breathe in the glow of color and the wonder of it all.

"It always feels good to be alive at this hour of the morning!" he said.

His father smiled appreciatively.

"You're generally asleep," he said. "But it's a good thing we did get up in time to-day, for unless my eyes are failing me, I think I can see in the distance the tunas coming in. Say, Vincente, doesn't that look like them over there?"

"Yes, sair, I t'ink dat's a school. I overheard a man on ze pier telling of a beeg one he caught yesterday," said the boatman.

"That was Mr. Retaner," was the answer, "one of the most famous anglers and authorities on fishing in America. That's why I came out this morning; he said he thought the school would arrive soon, and what Retaner doesn't know about fishing isn't worth knowing. He practically created deep-sea angling in America, so that as an industry it is worth millions of dollars annually to the country, and as a sport it has been put in the first rank."

Across the sea of gla.s.s with its rose reflections of the sunrise and the deep underglow of richly-colored life beneath the transparent water, there came a quick shiver of ripples. Then half a mile away, but advancing rapidly, appeared a strange turmoil, and in the sunlight, a stretch of sea, acres in extent, was churned into white foam, looking like some fairy ice- or snow-field. Above this, at a height of about ten feet, glittered a palpitating silver canopy, almost blinding in its sparkle and its sheen.

"What is that?" asked Colin, wondering.

"The tuna feeding and coming down the coast," was the reply.

As it drew nearer, Colin saw that the gleaming silver canopy was formed of thousands upon thousands of flying-fish, skimming through the air, dropping to the water every fifty yards or so, then, with a single twist of the screw-like tail, rising in the air for another soaring flight.

Below, from the surface of the water broken to foam by the tumult, would leap those tremendous jumpers of the sea, the tuna, plunging through the living cloud of flying-fish, and dropping to feed upon those which fell stunned under their impetuous charges. Occasionally, but very rarely, a tuna would seize its fish in midair, and it was marvelous to see a fish nearly as large as a man spring like a bolt from a cross-bow out of the sea, often until it was ten feet above the water, then turn and plunge back into the ocean.

"We'd better get out of here, I think," Major Dare said to the boatman; "this is getting to be too much of a good thing."

But, as he said the word, the school of flying-fish swerved right in the direction of the boat, and in a minute the anglers were surrounded. The silent, skimming flight of the long-finned flying-fish, the boiling of the sea, lashed to fury by the pursuing tuna, and these living projectiles, hurled as a silvered bolt into the air, frightened Colin not a little, although he was enjoying the experience thoroughly.

"Look out you don't get struck by a flying-fish," his father called to him, bending low in his seat. Colin, who had not thought of this possibility, followed suit rapidly, because the California flying-fish, unlike his Atlantic cousin, is a fish sometimes eighteen inches long, and he saw that if he were struck by one in the full speed of its skimming flight, he might easily be knocked overboard.

"Can't they see where they are going?" asked the boy.

"They can see well enough," his father answered, "but they have little or no control over their flight. They can't change the direction in which they are going until they touch water again. That's how the tuna catches them, it swims under in a straight line and grabs the fish as it comes down to get impetus for another flight."

"But I thought flying-fish went ever so much higher than that!" said the boy. "I'm sure I've read of their landing on the decks of vessels!"

"They do," was the answer; "they are attracted by the glare of the lights and fall on board. But that is generally on sailing vessels with a low freeboard. You don't often hear of flying-fish falling on the deck of a modern liner, and in the few cases in which they have, it has been because they happened to come out of the water with a rush against a slant of wind which carried them up twenty or thirty feet. They go with an awful force, and I knew an angler once who was pitched head first overboard by a flying-fish, and was nearly drowned before his boatman could get him aboard. He had been struck square between the shoulders and the blow had stunned him for the moment."

"Suppose a chap got hit by a tuna?" queried the boy.

"That's less likely," the father answered, "because, you see, the tuna comes nearly straight up and down; he leaps, he doesn't skim."

"Zere was one went t'rough a boat last season, Major Dare," the boatman interjected. "It was late in ze year, after you had gone, I t'ink, sair."

"Had it been hooked?" asked Colin.

"No, sair," the boatman answered; "tuna don't leap after zey are hooked.

It was when zey were chasing a school, just like this."

"You're thinking of the tarpon, Colin," his father said; "it leaps wildly after it has been hooked. The tuna, although a wonderful leaper, hardly ever rises from the water after it is fast to the line. But the tarpon is a vicious fighter. A couple of years ago a boat was found drifting in the Galveston fishing-ground off Texas, with a dead angler and a dead tarpon. The fish had been hooked and had tried to leap over the boat, striking the angler and breaking his neck, then had fallen into the boat itself and had not been able to get out."

"There's some excitement to fishing when it's like that!" Colin commented.

"It's as good as big-game hunting any day, I think," his father answered; "and you don't have to travel for weeks out of civilization to find it. Well, now, we'll give you a chance to show how much of the angler you've got in you."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHERE THE BIG TUNA WAS CAUGHT.

The Bay and City of Avalon, Santa Catalina Islands, Cal., the most famous sport-fishing centre in the world.

_By permission of Mr. Chas. Fredk. Holder._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LARGEST SUNFISH ON RECORD.

Estimated at over 2500 pounds, caught off Avalon, Santa Catalina.

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

He handed Colin a rod and the boy looked at it. It was nearly seven feet long, and the whole weight of it, except for the short b.u.t.t which held the reel, was not more than sixteen ounces. The line was thin enough to be threaded through a big darning-needle, it was known as '21 thread' as it had that number of strands, each strand being tested to a breaking strain of two pounds.

"Something will smash, sure," said Colin, examining the outfit carefully; "that looks as though it wouldn't hold a trout!"

"The rod is a split bamboo," his father said, "and if the line breaks it will be because you've allowed the fish to jerk. Anybody can catch fish with a heavy line, but the fish hasn't got any chance, and there's no sport in it. It's on a par with shooting quail sitting instead of flushing them. Good angling consists in landing the heaviest fish with the lightest tackle, not in securing the greatest amount of fish. Why, here in Avalon, there isn't a single boatman who would allow his boat to be used by a 'fish-hog' who wanted to use heavy tackle."

He had hardly finished speaking when there came a quiver on the line, and excitedly Colin jerked up his rod.

"Don't strike with a jerk!" his father cried, but Colin was in fortune, and the line did not break. The reel screamed "z-z-z-ee" with the speed of its revolutions as the tuna sped to the bottom, and the older angler, leaning forward, wetted thoroughly the leather brake that the boy was holding down with his right thumb.

"Easy on the brake," came the warning; "don't put too much strain on the line or she'll snap!"

But Colin had the makings of an angler in him and he was able instinctively to judge the amount of pressure that was needed. The tuna, followed by a sheet of spume-blue water churned by the rapidly-towed line, plunged on and on, until two hundred and fifty feet of line had been run out. Then, from the ice-cold bottom, rising as a meteor darts across the sky, the great fish clove the water to the surface.

"What will I do when he leaps?" asked Colin breathlessly, reeling for dear life as soon as he felt the upward dash of the tuna.

"He won't leap after he's hooked," his father said; "they very seldom do. I told you that before. It's the tarpon that plunges and leaps after being hooked."

The tuna reached the surface with a speed that seemed incredible to the boy, and though he had been reeling as rapidly as he could make his fingers fly, even the big multiplier on the reel had failed to bring in all the slack. The tuna, panic-stricken by the strange line that hissed behind him and which he could neither outrace nor shake off, tried to charge the loops of twine that the reel had not yet been able to bring in. The sea fairly seemed to boil as the fin of the tuna cut through the water at the surface.