About eleven o’clock I sighted fins. We made a circle round him, and drew the bait almost right across his bill. He went down. Again that familiar waiting, poignant suspense!... He refused to strike.
Next one was a big fellow with pale fins. We made a perfect circle, and he went down as if to take the bait!... But he came up. We tried again. Same result. Then we put on an albacore and drew that, tail first, in front of him. Slowly he swam toward it, went down, and suddenly turned and shot away, leaving a big wake. He was badly scared by that albacore.
Next one we worked three times before he went down, and the last one gave us opportunity for only one circle before he sank.
They are shy, keen, and wise.
The morning following, as we headed out over a darkly rippling sea, some four miles off Long Point, where we had the thrilling strikes from the big swordfish, and which place we had fondly imagined was our happy hunting-ground—because it was near shore and off the usual fishing course out in the channel—we ran into Boschen fighting a fish.
This is a spectacle not given to many fishermen, and I saw my opportunity.
With my glass I watched Boschen fight the swordfish, and I concluded from the way he pulled that he was fast to the bottom of the ocean. We went on our way then, and that night when I got in I saw his wonderful swordfish, the world’s record we all knew he would get some day. Four hundred and sixty-three pounds! And he had the luck to kill this great fish in short time. My friend Doctor Riggin, a scientist, dissected this fish, and found that Boschen’s hook had torn into the heart. This strange feature explained the easy capture, and, though it might detract somewhat from Boschen’s pride in the achievement, it certainly did not detract from the record.
That night, after coming in from the day’s hunt for swordfish, Dan and I decided to get good bait. At five thirty we started for seal rocks. The sun was setting, and the red fog over the west end of the island was weird and beautiful. Long, slow swells were running, and they boomed inshore on the rocks. Seals were barking—a hoarse, raucous croak. I saw a lonely heron silhouetted against the red glow of the western horizon.
We fished—trolling slowly a few hundred yards offshore—and soon were fighting barracuda, which we needed so badly for swordfish bait.
They strike easily, and put up a jerky kind of battle. They are a long, slim fish, yellow and white in the water, a glistening pale bronze and silver when landed. I hooked a harder-fighting fish, which, when brought in, proved to be a white sea-bass, a very beautiful species with faint purplish color and mottled opal tints above the deep silver.