“Run closer to them,” I said to him.
We ran over within fifty feet of the edge of the school, stopped the boat, and all climbed up on top of the deck.
Then we beheld a spectacle calculated to thrill the most phlegmatic fisherman. It simply enraptured me, and I think I am still too close to it to describe it well. The dark-blue water, heaving in great, low, lazy swells, showed a roughened spot of perhaps two acres in extent. The sun, shining over our shoulders, caught silvery-green gleams of fish, flashing wide and changing to blue. Long, round, bronze backs deep under the surface, caught the sunlight. Blue fins and tails, sharp and curved, like sabers, cleared the water. Here a huge tuna would turn on his side, gleaming broad and bright, and there another would roll on the surface, breaking water like a tarpon with a slow, heavy souse.
“Look at the leaders,” said Captain Dan. “I’ll bet they’re three-hundred-pound fish.”
I saw then that the school, lazy as they seemed, were slowly following the leaders, rolling and riding the swells. These leaders threw up surges and ridges on the surface. They plowed the water.
“What’d happen if we skipped a flying-fish across the water in front of those leaders?” I asked Captain Dan.
He threw up his hands. “You’d see a German torpedo explode.”
“Say! tuna are no relation to Huns!” put in my brother.
It took only a few moments for the school to drift by us. Then we ran over to another school, with the same experience. In this way we visited several of these near-by schools, all of which were composed of large tuna. Captain Dan, however, said he believed the first two schools, evidently leaders of this vast sea of tuna, contained the largest fish. For half an hour we fooled around, watching the schools and praying for wind to fly the kite. Captain Dan finally trolled our baits through one school, which sank without rewarding us with a strike.
At this juncture I saw a tiny speck of a boat way out on the horizon. Captain Dan said it was Shorty’s boat with Adams. I suggested that, as we had to wait for wind to fly the kite, we run in and attract Shorty’s attention. I certainly wanted some one else to see those magnificent schools of tuna. Forthwith we ran in several miles until we attracted the attention of the boatman Captain Dan had taken to be Shorty. But it turned out to be somebody else, and my good intentions also turned out to my misfortune.