United States or Sint Maarten ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In a quarter of an hour we had caught but four schnapper and lost a dozen or more hooks; my own line was bitten through at about five fathoms from the surface a piece of meat skin had wound itself round it and had been discovered by one of these predatory villains. No wonder that the Samoans and natives of the Tokelau Islands term the leather-jacket isumu moana the sea-rat.
In the vicinity of the reef, or about the isolated coral boulders, or "mushrooms" as we called them, these fish were a great annoyance to me, though my native friends liked them well enough, especially the large, gorgeously-hued "leather-jackets," to which they have given the very appropriate name of isuumu moana the sea-rat for they have a great trick of quietly biting a baited line a few inches above the hook.
Well have the Samoans named the leather-jacket Isu'umu Moana the sea-rat.
The hound-shark, the basking-shark, and the port-beagle were not less loyal; and these, the most perfectly organized of my cartilaginous tribes, handed me over to the deep-swimming Norwegian 'sea-rat. Thus I kept steadily southward, the water growing warmer hour by hour, now riding on the serrated snouts of saw-fishes, now moving in the midst of battalions of sword-fish, now acknowledged by the great pike, now vaulting above the surface on the backs of flying-fish, now clinging to the spines of sturgeons, now passing through illimitable shoals of cod, now borne by the swift sea-salmon, now dazzled by the golden scales of the carp, now passing over miles of flat-fish, now hailed by monster conger-eels, now swimming down files of leering hippocampuses, now received by congregations of staid aldermanic lobsters.
Apropos of the "sea-rat," I may mention that their four closely-set and humanlike teeth are so thick that they will often crush an ordinary hook as if it were made of glass, and as their mouths are exceedingly small, and many are heavy, powerful fishes, they cause havoc with ordinary tackle.
Word Of The Day