MEMORABLE OF LONG KEY
LEAPING SAILFISH
This one thing, then, I believe I have proved to myself—that the sailfish is the gamest, the most beautiful and spectacular, and the hardest fish to catch on light tackle, just as his brother, the Pacific swordfish, is the grandest fish to take on the heaviest of tackle.
Long Key, indeed, has its charm. Most all the anglers who visit there go back again. Only the queer ones—and there are many—who want three kinds of boats, and nine kinds of bait, and a deep-sea diver for a boatman, and tackle that cannot be broken, and smooth, calm seas always, and five hundred pounds of fish a day—only that kind complain of Long Key and kick—and yet go back again!
Sailfish will draw more and finer anglers down to the white strip of color that shines white all day under a white sun and the same all night under white stars. But it is not alone the fish that draws real sportsmen to a place and makes them love it and profit by their return. It is the spirit of the place—the mystery, like that of the little hermit-crab, which crawls over the coral sand in his stolen shell, and keeps to his lonely course, and loves his life so well—sunshine, which is best of all for men; and the wind in the waving palms; and the lonely, wandering coast with the eternal moan out on the reefs, the sweet, fresh tang, the clear, antiseptic breath of salt, and always by the glowing, hot, colorful day or by the soft dark night with its shadows and whisperings on the beach, that significant presence—the sense of something vaster than the heaving sea.