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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