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The wind had veered still further to the east and the fog hung more thickly on the horizon. The barrel was nearer. At last he had begun to gain on it. He rowed with renewed vigor. Either the fish was tiring out or had stopped swimming altogether. Presently the dory bumped against the keg. Pulling in his oars and dropping them over the thwarts, he sprang forward and gaffed the buoy.
"No matter! We're getting rid of 'em cheap, if they scoop a dozen! But look at that! They've got all they want, and now they're cutting away our buoys! Here's where I call a halt!" He sprang out upon the bank in plain sight. "Hi, there! Stop that!" One of the men had just gaffed a buoy. At Jim's hail he glanced up and waved his hand nonchalantly. Then he deliberately cut the warp.
If it were rage made her hook the stot, she was laughing now laughing so that when the beast stopped she could hardly reel in the line. And old Robert I thought he would have had a fit. 'Will I gaff him now, Miss Honnor? he cried, as he came running along. But the stot didn't mean to be gaffed.
Captain Dan threw the wheel hard over and the boat turned. The swordfish, tired out and unconscious of freedom, was floating near the surface, a drifting blaze of purple. The boat sheered close to him. Captain Dan reached over with a gaff and all but gaffed that swordfish before he sank too deep. Captain Dan was white with disappointment.
In the early days of our hunt I had been so lucky as to run down and kill a large moose, whose antlered head was a valuable trophy; and so I confided it to the especial charge of my faithful follower, Zachary Hiver, a brulé or half-breed of the Chippewa nation, who had hunted buffaloes with me on the plains of the Saskatchewan and gaffed my salmon in the swift waters of the Mingan and Escoumains.
Then she came up, and they hauled the painter in and gaffed me over the rail. "You blankety blank fool!" roared Clancy, as soon as I stood up "don't you know any better? A fine thing we'd have to be telegraphing home, wouldn't it? Are you all right now?" "All right," I said, and felt pretty cheap.
I have much to say to you that is not for the public ear." I think at this moment poor old Tuppy must have got a sudden touch of cramp. He had been sitting hard by, staring at the ceiling, and he now gave a sharp leap like a gaffed salmon and upset a small table containing a vase, a bowl of potpourri, two china dogs, and a copy of Omar Khayyám bound in limp leather.
But the big flat fish was gaffed and hauled in at last. "Beginner's luck," said Dan, wiping his forehead. "He's all of a hundred." Harvey looked at the huge gray-and-mottled creature with unspeakable pride. He had seen halibut many times on marble slabs ashore, but it had never occurred to him to ask how they came inland. Now he knew; and every inch of his body ached with fatigue.
But I need not say what my first fish or any particular fish did or what happened. I will only say that I got all I wanted enough to wear me out physically till quite ready to be gaffed myself. It is tremendously hard work. To rest myself and vary the sport I would leave the tarpon and tackle the red-fish, an equally game and fighting fish, but much smaller, scaling about 15 to 20 lbs.
"If I ever gaff another fish, may I be gaffed myself," I said. "Fish do not feel so acutely as you imagine," replied R , wiping the penknife on his handkerchief with the coolness of an anatomical operator; "all the quivering you observe is not from actual pain, but merely from muscular action."
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