"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.
"Look out now, Colin," the boy's father called. "He'll see the boat in a minute!"
He did. On the instant he saw the launch and the three men in it, and in the very midst of his charge, the body bent and shot into the depths again.
"Watch out for the jerk!" the older angler cried, and as the fish reached the end of the slack line there was a sudden tug which Colin felt sure meant a lost fish. But his father's warning had come in time, and by releasing the thumb-brake entirely when the tug came, the reel was free, and it
rattled out another fifty feet, the boy gradually beginning to apply the pressure again and to feel the tuna at the end of the line.
One hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet of line reeled out at this second great rush, and the older man began to look grave as the big reel grew empty.
"Ought I to try and stop him with the brake, Father?" asked the boy.