CHAPTER LV

SPORTING MEMORIES (_Continued_)

III. FISHING

When, as a youngster, I was sea-fishing at Ascension, my boat made fast

to a buoy, I had used all my bait without getting a fish, when a booby

gull kindly came and sat on the buoy. I knocked him over with an oar,

used his remains for bait, and caught lots of fish.

In nearly every ship in which I have served, I had a trammel, a trawl

and a trot. As a midshipman, I used them myself; when I became a

senior officer, I lent them to the midshipmen.

Upon visiting the island of Juan Fernandez, while I was a midshipman in

the _Clio_, we found three men living in the home of Robinson Crusoe.

They subsisted chiefly upon crayfish. We used to fish for these

Crustacea, using for bait a piece of a Marine's scarlet tunic. The

fish used to take the crayfish while we were hauling them up. In a few

hours we caught enough to feed the whole ship's company.

Off the Horn, and in the South Pacific, I have killed many albatross in

calm weather, or when the ship was proceeding very slowly under sail.

I made a hook out of several hooks like a paternoster. If the bird

touched the bait, he was always caught. The upper mandible of the

albatross has a curve like the beak of a parrot, and that curve is all

there is to hold the hook. When the bird is being hauled on board, the

lower mandible catches the water and drives him underneath. When he

comes on board he is {545} full of water, and is immediately very sick.

Both the first and second pinion bones make beautiful pipe stems about

fourteen inches long. I brought many home for my friends. The feet,

dried, cleaned and manufactured into bags, make excellent tobacco

pouches.

Many a shark have I caught in the old days. I have had two sharks on

my hook at once. One had taken the hook, which, barb and all, had

pierced right through his jaw; and another shark went for it and got

the end of the hook into his mouth. They were both on the hook for

some little time, and eventually I killed the first one hooked. I made

a walking-stick out of his backbone.

The biggest shark I ever killed measured 12 feet 2 inches long.

I bought my shark hook from a man in an American whaling; schooner at

the Sandwich Islands. I filed a little notch on the shaft of my hook

whenever I killed a shark. To my great annoyance, someone stole my

hook in after years.

I was once towing a cod-line astern for dolphin, when a shark took the

bait. I took the line round a cleat and played him, or he would have

carried it away; got him close enough to get a bowline over his tail,

and hauled him on board. This method is generally used for getting a

shark on board. Until his tail is cut off with an axe, a shark plays

ballyhooly with all around him. A shark's heart is so muscular, and

expands and contracts so violently after death that it is impossible to

hold it in the hand. Sharks are bad eating, but in those salt-horse

days we relished them.

My record in salmon fishing was made in Norway, when together with Lord

Wolseley, Mr. Bayard, and Mr. Abram Hewett, I was a guest on board the

yacht of my friend, Mr. Fred Wynn. In one night's fly-fishing, I

killed forty-one fish. I gave eight of them to the fishermen who

worked the canoe for me, and brought thirty-three back to the yacht.

Tarpon fishing is the acme of sea-fishing. Whereas a {546} salmon is

killed by a rod and delicate handling, a tarpon is killed by the line

and herculean strength. The rod used is short and thick. The line is

made of cotton, thinner and lighter than a salmon line, but

extraordinarily strong. It is from 300 to 400 yards long, with four

brakes, two on the reel, and two of thick leather placed on the thumbs.

When the tarpon is struck, he invariably jumps into the air from six to

ten feet, and shakes his head to shake the hook out, an effort in which

he often succeeds. He has no teeth, but the upper part of his mouth is

as hard as a cow's hoof, and it takes a tremendous strike to get a hook

into it past the barb. The biggest tarpon I killed was 186 lb. I

think Lord Desborough holds the record with a tarpon of 240 lb., 7 feet

6 inches long, 42 inches girth. Lord Desborough killed 100 tarpon in

ten days.

Some years ago, I was most kindly invited by my old friend, Colonel

Robert M. Thompson, to stay with him in his houseboat _Everglades_ on

the coast of Florida. The houseboat was driven by a motor and drew one

foot of water. When it came on to blow, Colonel Thompson used to run

her up on the beach.

But upon one occasion, we went upon an adventurous voyage, right out

into the Atlantic, making a point from Florida to the north; the wind

freshened; and the houseboat had all the weather she cared for.

Colonel Thompson tells me that while securing loose gear and generally

battening down, I remarked that probably no British admiral had ever

before found himself in a houseboat drawing one foot of water 50 miles

out on the Atlantic in a seaway.

I never had such wonderful sport as I had with Colonel Thompson in the

_Everglades_. We killed tons of fish all with the rod. One night,

with a small tarpon rod I killed seven sergeant fish, average 28 lb.

This fish takes two long runs, and then turns up on his back, dead.

Upon another night I had on an enormous tarpon; the boatman declared it

to be the biggest he had ever seen (it always is when one fails to land

it). I had just got into the shore after over an {547} hour's work at

the tarpon, when it went off again slowly, with the appearance of a

fish, but the methods of a steam roller.

The boatman said:

"Try to check it from going into that current; it is full of sharks."

But the tarpon steadily proceeded. On getting into the current, it

suddenly took a run and jumped into the air. When it was half out of

the water, a shark's head appeared and bit it in two. I hauled only

the head and shoulders home. The shark was so large that we tried to

catch him next day, and hooked either him or another. He was so heavy

that we could make nothing of him. He took us where he liked, but

never left the current. So we bent a line on to the one by which we

held him, took it to the capstan of a yacht lying near by, hove him up

to the side, and shot him with a rifle. He was then triced up by the

tail by a tackle from the mast. He was a hammer-headed shark over 18

feet long.

He disgorged soap, bottles, sardine-tins, Armour meat-tins, a number of

large crab shells, some small turtle shells, pieces of fish, and the

midship section of a large tarpon, which was supposed to have been the

piece bitten out of my failure of the previous night.

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