Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries.
"Yes, Mr. Prelatt," Colin answered, "and if he hadn't told me that the record was authentic and that the sword and section of timber had been in the National Museum, I might have doubted it."
"They're enormously powerful, one of the best boatmen I ever knew was killed by a swordfish," said the director.
"How was that, sir?"
"He had harpooned the swordfish and had gone out in the small boat to lance it, when the huge fish dived under the craft and shot up from the bottom like a rocket, his sword going through the timbers as though they were paper and striking the boatman with such force that he was killed almost instantly. Boats used often to be sunk by the rushes of a swordfish, but nowadays the greater part of the work is done directly from the deck of a schooner. No amount of changes, however, can take all the excitement out of a swordfish capture."
"Will they attack a boat unprovoked?"
"There are lots of cases in which they are supposed to have done so," the director replied, "but I think any such instances were probably swordfish who had been wounded—but not fatally. You knew that the swordfish was the Monarch of all the Fish?"
"No," Colin answered, "I didn't."
"He was so elected at one of the meetings of the International Congress of Fisheries," said the director, smiling. "We were waiting for the chairman or the speaker or somebody and in casual conversation the query arose as to who was the real master of the seas, in the same way that the lion is regarded as the King of Beasts."