Whatever their name may be, of one thing I am certain, they make splendid eating, and taste like small mahseer—of course everyone knows their taste!
I rigged up a bamboo rod, using cast of Loch Leven flies, with the wings cut off, with small pieces of sardine for bait. We made quite good baskets of young bonita, and tunny, and sardines: tunny fry, of course; a two-year-old tunny would snap strong salmon gut and a full-grown tunny takes a rope as thick as a stylo pen to pull it in; and lots of time. You can even take them on a tarpon line if you think life is too long.
A thing I could not understand about this small-game hunting was the way certain silvery fish eluded our efforts to catch them. Whilst other fish ate the finely chopped sardine meat we threw over, and young mackerel and herring, etc., calmly took our hooks baited with pieces of sardine, these flat silvery fish like saucers on edge almost at once grasped our idea—they eyed the bait and hook, sailed along the gut of the dropper, examining it closely, sailed up the gut of the cast and said: “No, no, we will take bait without a hook, but not this.” I wonder why their perception should be so much keener than those of the other fish; probably none of them had ever seen a hook in their lives.
But this writing about small fry is “wandering from the point,” as the cook said to the eel; let us get back to whaling or at least to whale-hunting.
We are off to the west end of San Miguel to go round it and beat about the north side in search of the whales which everyone tells us are to be found there, and the view of glens and woods and fields bathed in sunshine under the cloud-capped hills is very sweetly refreshing. But luxurious rolling on the blue seas and all the sweet scenery hardly take away the unpleasing taste of last night. The engine overhaul was only finished last night, so we intended to up anchor this morning at daylight. Henriksen and I went ashore and waited for the Consul about some affairs at Robert’s Café, a large, quiet café, with wide-open doors facing the sea. As we sat there rather silently, away in the velvety blue night, out to sea beyond the breakwater, several rockets rose and burst in a golden shower and we heard the continuous blast of a ship’s horn making signals of distress. We jumped! so did the other two or three cigarette-smoking habitués of the café, and all got on to the sea-front, and the horn continued.
“That’s a wreck,” said Henriksen.
“Yes,” said I.
“Wat we do?” said Henriksen.