Hereby I learned have not to despise
Whatever thing seems small in common eyes.”
Baron Sahartur, in a letter from Quebec in 1783, described a conflict between a whale and a sword-fish which took place within gun shot of his frigate. He remarks: “We were perfectly charmed when we saw the sword-fish jump out of the water in order to dart its spear into the body of the whale when obliged to take breath. This entertaining show lasted at least two hours, sometimes to the starboard and sometimes to the larboard of the ship. The sailors, among whom superstition prevails as much as among the Egyptians, took this for a presage of some mighty storm.”
There are two great sword-fisheries in the world, one on the coast of New England, and the other in the waters about Sicily. The former gives employment, in different years, to from twenty to forty vessels, and from sixty to one hundred and twenty men; the latter to over three hundred boats and seventeen hundred men. In Italy the annual product of the fishery amounts to about 320,000 pounds, while in New England, counting the fish taken incidentally by halibut and mackerel vessels, the yield is at least 1,000,000 pounds.
The apparatus used in killing sword-fish is very simple. It consists of the “pulpit” or “cresembo,” a frame for the support of the harpooneer as he stands upon the end of the bow-sprit, the “lily iron” or “Indian dart,” which is attached by a long line to a keg serving as a buoy, and is thrust into the fish by means of a pole about sixteen feet in length. As the vessel cruises over the schooling grounds a lookout is stationed at the masthead, whose keen eye descries the tell-tale dorsal fins at a distance of two or three miles. By voice and gesture he directs the course of the vessel until the skipper can see the fish from his station in the pulpit. There is no difficulty in approaching the fish with a large vessel, although they will not suffer a small boat to come near them. When the fish is from six to ten feet in front of the vessel, it is struck. The harpoon is never thrown, the pole being too long. The dart penetrates the back of the fish, close to the side of the high dorsal fin, and immediately detaches itself from the pole, which is withdrawn. The dart having been fastened, the line is allowed to run out as far as the fish will carry it, and is then passed into a small boat, which is towing at the stern. Two men jump into this and pull in upon the line until the fish is brought in alongside.
The pursuit of the sword-fish is much more exciting than ordinary fishing, for it resembles the pursuit of large animals upon land. There is no slow and careful baiting and patient waiting, and no disappointment caused by the capture of worthless “bait-stealers.” The game is seen and followed, outwitted by wary tactics, and killed by strength of arm and skill. The sword-fish sometimes proves a powerful antagonist, and sends his pursuers’ vessel into harbor, leaking and almost sinking from injuries which he has inflicted. I have known a vessel to be struck by wounded sword-fish as many as twenty times in one season. There is even the spice of personal danger to give savor to the chase. One of the crew of a Connecticut schooner was severely wounded by a beak thrust through the oak floor of the boat in which he was standing, and penetrating two inches into his naked heel. A strange fascination draws men to this pursuit when they have once learned its charm. An old sword-fisherman, with an experience of twenty years, told me that when he was on the fishing ground he fished all night in his dreams, and that many a time he had bruised his hands and rubbed the skin off his knuckles by striking them against the ceiling of his bunk when he raised his arms to thrust the harpoon into imaginary monster sword-fishes.
The home and its apartments should not be treated as a dead thing, where we make best arrangement of its fittings, and there leave it. It must grow in range and in expression with our necessities, and diverging, and developing tastes. The best of decorators can not put that last finish which must come from home hands. It is a great canvas always on the easel before us—growing in its power to interest every day and year—never getting its last touches—never quite ready to be taken down and parted with. No home should so far out-top the tastes of its inmates that they can not somewhere and somehow deck it with the record of their love and culture. It is an awful thing to live in a house where no new nail can be driven in the wall, and no tray of wild flowers, or of wood-mosses be set upon a window sill. The ways are endless, in short, in which a house can be endowed with that home atmosphere which shall be redolent of the tastes of its inmates.—Donald G. Mitchell.