emphasis that they would rather catch no fish at all than return with
a full creel inveigled in an “unsportsmanlike” way. Of course, ideas
of what constitutes sport vary almost with the individual, since like
the rubric--(with red edges, please)--sporting canons are susceptible
of private interpretation. But if the ultimate object of fishing be
the gratification of catching fish, my stupidity baulks at the notion
of an angler, enthusiastic or stolid, preferring to be unsuccessful
rather than to succeed by the exercise of a little personal ingenuity,
whether it be unconventional or canonical. What can be more pathetic,
for instance, than to see a perfectly-equipped sportsman, whose outfit
has made a terrible hole in a £20 note, watching with simulated
indifference outwardly, but black envy clawing his liver, some grimy
urchin with string and stick grassing fish after fish, while he is
unable to get a rise? Perhaps, however, my point of view is unfair,
because one-sided. For while it has many hundreds of times been my
lot to either catch some fish or go without a meal, which certainly
quickened my interest in the sport, I have seldom had the pleasure of
fishing merely for amusement. Although never a professional fisherman,
and therefore a hater of nets as reducing the joy or success to the
level of scavenging, I have from a very early age, and in nearly every
part of the world washed by the sea, taken a hand at fishing from deep
personal motives, and always on unconventional lines.
My first introduction to the stern delights of sea-fishing was in a
Jamaican harbour when I was thirteen years old. Having been shipwrecked
I was for the time by way of being a juvenile beachcomber, but I had
plenty of good-natured darky chums. Four of them took me out one day
in their canoe barracouta-fishing. Now this fish is a sort of sea-pike
which sometimes reaches four feet in length, and for his fierceness
is more dreaded in the West Indies by bathers than the much maligned
shark. His principal food is small fish, although he is not dainty.
In order to imitate as nearly as possible the flight of his usual
prey, it is customary for four darkies to man a canoe, get well out
to sea during the early morning calm, and then paddle furiously for a
few hundred yards at a time, towing a small mackerel at the end of a
stout line. On this occasion I held the line. I thought it glorious
fun; but suddenly I saw a bar of silver leap into the air, followed
instanter by my sudden exit from the canoe. I had a turn of the line
round my hand, a trick of inexperience. There was a good deal of noise
and excitement, during which the dugout capsized and spilled her crew
around, while the big fish did his best to tow the light craft away
from us; but in some mysterious scrambling fashion we all embarked
again. By this time the ’couter was very tired, allowing us to haul
him up alongside and take him aboard quite peaceably. Then hey for the
beach, borrow a truck, and peddle the prize around town at so much a
pound. But they wouldn’t take me any more.
A good deal of promiscuous fishing of an unsatisfactory kind was added
to my youthful experiences before I reached home, some of it only to be
recalled with many pangs. After a long, weary pull in the sweltering,
tropical evenings, to drop upon some ghoulish reef-spur and break hook
after hook in the rugged coral branches until no more remained, and we
must needs return hungry and dispirited--these are not pleasant things
to remember. But the following year I made my first long voyage, and
on the passage out got an experience that makes my finger-tips tingle
to-day. With envious eyes I had watched the mate, as from the end of
the flying jibboom he had vainly tried to cozen some bonito (a sort of
exaggerated mackerel) that were accompanying the ship into the belief
that a shred of white rag with which he was flicking the water was a
flying-fish. Naturally, I burned to show that I could succeed, and no
sooner had he come in to take the sun than I was out along the boom
like a rat to take his place. There was a fresh breeze blowing, and
as the ship heeled and plunged the line blew far away to leeward in
a graceful curve which only permitted the rag to touch the wave-tops
occasionally. I trembled so with excitement that I could not have kept
my perch, but that my legs were jammed in between the jib guys and the
boom. I had not been there more than five minutes when a splendid fish
sprang twenty feet into the air and swallowed my bait on the wing. I
hauled for dear life, scarcely daring to look below where my prize
hung dangling, a weight I could only just manage to pull up. But I
succeeded at last, and grabbed him to my panting breast. There wasn’t
time to get scared at the contract I had on my hands; I just hung on
while his tremendous vibrations benumbed my body so that I could not
even feel that he was actually chafing all the skin off my ribs. At
last, feeling my strength almost gone, I plunged him into the folds
of the flying-jib, which was furled on the boom, and laid on him. In
this way I succeeded in overcoming his reluctance to stay with me,
and eventually I bore him on board in triumph, not even dashed by the
effective ropes-ending I got for soaking the jib in blood from head to
tack. After that memorable capture I was simply crazed with fishing.
Even in calms, when predatory fish such as dolphin, barracouta, bonito,
or albacore hang around listlessly and are considered quite uncatchable
by seamen generally, I have managed to deceive them and obtain that
great desideratum, a fresh mess for all hands. But coming home round
the Cape, when in the strength of the Agulhas current, the wind failed,
and the mate got out the deep-sea lead-line. In orthodox fashion we
passed it forrard and dropped the long plummet into the dark depths,
with two or three stout hooks, baited with lumps of fat pork, fastened
to it. When we hauled it in each hook was burdened with a magnificent
cod, and a scene of wild excitement ensued. All the watch improvised
tackle of some kind--a piece of hambro’ line, a marlinespike for
sinker, and one hook was the usual outfit--and in a couple of hours the
deck was like Billingsgate. All sorts and conditions of fish apparently
lived down there, and all most accommodating in their appetite.
In Manila Bay the natives taught me how to catch a delicious fish like
a more symmetrical John Dory, with a most delicate line of twisted
grass and a tiny hook. The bait was rice, boiled to a paste; and so
successful was I that all hands enjoyed a hearty supper of fish every
evening, being the only crew in the harbour where such a thing was
known. On that passage home, however, I caught a Tartar. I was fishing
off the boom for bonito, when suddenly the school closed up into
a compact body and fled. I thought it strange, but went on playing
my bait. Suddenly out of the cool shade beneath the ship rushed an
albacore, grabbing my bait before I had time to lift it out of his
way. He wasn’t very large for his kind, but my gracious, he was all I
wanted. I actually tried to haul him up at first, but I couldn’t begin
to lift him; so I was fain to play him until we were both exhausted. He
was eventually secured at last by the simple expedient of lowering a
man overside who slipped a bowline round him, by which he was hoisted
on board. He weighed 120 lb., but seemed as strong as a buffalo. Some
years after, when out flying-fishing in Barbados one morning, we hooked
an albacore that towed our boat, a 5-tonner, for over six miles before
he gave in. We towed him alongside into the carenage and had him
hoisted on to the wharf by a crane. He weighed 470 lb. The albacore is
almost, if not quite, identical with the tunny of the Mediterranean and
the tuna of California, and anybody who thirsts for greater sport than
the noblest salmon can give, or even the magnificent tarpon, should try
what the tuna can do for them.
But of all the queer fish I ever caught, one that I came across in
Tonala River, Mexico, was the strangest. It was just inside the bar,
and I had been sailing the boat smartly to and fro, catching a kind of
caranx that loves a fleeting silvery bait. Sport becoming quiet, and
wind falling, I packed about a pound of fish on my largest hook and
let it trail while I smoked the cigarito of laziness. I hoped to get
a good-sized fish in this way before returning on board. Suddenly my
line tautened out, zip, zip--this was no ordinary fish. After about
twenty minutes of thoroughly exhausting work I caught sight of a dirty,
brownish mass away down under water. Redoubling my efforts, up came my
fish--an alligator ten feet long. He looked perfectly devilish, and for
the moment I was really scared. Hooks were scarce, however, so calling
upon the darky with me to stand by with a running bowline, I hauled
away till I got his hideous snout up out of the water, which I doubt
whether I should have done but that he came for me with a rush at the
last. Joe dropped the noose over his upper jaw most neatly, getting
it tightened between his ugly yellow teeth so that he couldn’t bite
it. Just then a breeze sprang up, and making the rope fast to a thwart
we kept away for the ship, the great saurian’s jaws banging against
the boat’s planks and ripping large splinters out of them. We got him
aboard safely, to find “he” was a female, with over a bushel of eggs in
her body and a strange collection of rubbish in her stomach.
XIX
DEVIL-FISH
Among such primitive peoples as still survive, not the least curious
or notable trait which universally obtains is the manner in which all
things uncanny, or which they are unable to comprehend, are by common
consent ascribed to the Devil. Not to _a_ devil as one of a host,
but _the_ Devil _par excellence_, as though they understood him to
be definable only as the master and originator of whatsoever things
are terrifying, incomprehensible, or cruel. Many eminent writers
have copiously enriched our literature by their researches into this
all-prevailing peculiarity, so that the subject has, on the whole, been
well threshed out, and it is merely alluded to _en passant_ as one of
the chief reasons for the epithet which forms the title of this chapter.
Now it will doubtless be readily admitted that sea-folk retain, even
among highly civilised nations, their old-world habits of thought
and expression longer than any other branch of the population. This
can scarcely be wondered at, since to all of us, even the least
imaginative, the eternal mystery of the ocean appeals with thrilling
and ever-fresh effect every time that we come into close personal
relations with it.
But when those whose daily bread depends upon their constant struggle
with the mighty marine forces, who are familiar with so many of its
marvels, and saturated with the awe-inspiring solemnity which is the
chief characteristic of the sea, are in the course of their avocations
brought suddenly in contact with some seldom-seen visitor of horrent
aspect arising from the gloomy unknown depths, with one accord they
speak of the monster as a “devil-fish,” and the name never fails to
adhere.
So that there is, not one species of devil-fish, but several, each
peculiar to some different part of the world, and inspiring its own
special terror in the hearts of mariners of many nations. Of the
Devil-fish that we in this country hear most about, and have indelibly
portrayed for us by Victor Hugo, the octopus, so much has been written
and said that it is not necessary now to do much more than make
passing allusion to the family. But the Cephalopoda embrace so vast
a variety that it seems hardly fair to single out of them all the
comparatively harmless octopus for opprobrium, while leaving severely
unmentioned the gigantic _onychoteuthis_ of the deep sea, to say
nothing of many intermediate cuttle-fish. From the enormous mollusc
just mentioned--which is, not unreasonably, credited by seamen with
being the largest fish in the ocean--to the tiny loligo, upon which
nearly all deep-water fish feed, hideousness is their prevailing
feature, and truly appalling of aspect some of the larger ones are,
while their omnivorous voracity makes them veritable sea-scavengers, to
whom nothing comes amiss, alive or dead. And while having no intention
to underrate the claims of the octopus to his diabolical prænomen
on account of his slimy ugliness and unquenchable ferocity, I feel
constrained to put in a word for that little-known horror of the deep,
the ten-armed cuttle-fish, which, like some fearful creation of a
diseased brain, broods over the dark and silent profundities of ocean,
extending his far-reaching tentacles through an immense area, touching
nothing living to which they do not cling with an embrace that never
relaxes until the victim is safely deposited within the crushing clutch
of the great parrot-like mandibles guarding the entrance to that vast
and never-to-be satisfied stomach. Nothing that the morbid imagination
of man has ever pictured can surpass in awful appearance the reality of
this dire chimæra, which, notwithstanding, has undoubtedly an important
part to play in the mysterious economy of the sea. “He dwelleth in the
thick darkness”; for, not content with the natural gloom of his abode,
he diffuses around him a cloud of sepia, which bewilders and blinds his
victims, rendering them an easy prey to the never-resting tentacles
which writhe through the mirk, ready at a touch to hold whatever is
there, be it small or great.
But the strangest fact connected with this mighty mollusc is, that
while from the earliest dawn of literature numberless allusions more or
less tinged with imagination have been made to it, modern science has
only very recently made up its mind to accept as a fact its existence
at all. So many indisputable proofs have, however, been forthcoming
of late years, both as to the size and structure of the gigantic
cuttle-fish, that it has now taken its place among the verities of
natural history as indisputably as the elephant or the tiger. It
has also been firmly established that the sperm whale or cachalot
(_Physeter macrocephalus_) finds his principal, if not his only, food
in these huge gelatinous masses while ranging the middle depths of the
ocean, and that their appearance on the sea surface is generally due to
this whale’s aggression.
To pass on, however, to a much less known “devil-fish.” In the long
fish gallery at the splendid Natural History Museum at South Kensington
there is a small specimen, some eighteen inches across, of a fish whose
habitat is the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
There it attains enormous proportions, and is, not without reason,
known to all the frequenters of those waters as the “devil-fish.”
When a youngster I was homeward bound from Sant’ Ana with a cargo of
mahogany, and when off Cape Campèche was one calm afternoon leaning
over the taffrail, looking down into the blue profound, on the watch
for fish. A gloomy shade came over the bright water, and up rose a
fearsome monster some eighteen feet across, and in general outline more
like a skate or ray than anything else, all except the head. There,
what appeared to be two curling horns about three feet apart rose one
on each side of the most horrible pair of eyes imaginable. A shark’s
eyes as he turns sideways under your vessel’s counter and looks up
to see if any one is coming are ghastly, green, and cruel; but this
thing’s eyes were all these and much more. I felt that the Book of
Revelation was incomplete without him, and his gaze haunts me yet.
Although quite sick and giddy at the sight of such a bogey, I could not
move until the awful thing, suddenly waving what seemed like mighty
wings, soared up out of the water soundlessly to a height of about six
feet, falling again with a thunderous splash that might have been heard
for miles. I must have fainted with fright, for the next thing I was
conscious of was awakening under the rough doctoring of my shipmates.
Since then I have never seen one leap upward in the daytime. At night,
when there is no wind, the sonorous splash is constantly to be heard,
although why they make that bat-like leap out of their proper element
is not easy to understand. It does not seem possible to believe such
awe-inspiring horrors capable of playful gambolling.
At another time, while mate of a barque loading in the Tonala River,
one of the Mexican mahogany ports, I was fishing one evening from the
vessel’s deck with a very stout line and hook for large fish.
A prowling devil-fish picked up my bait, and feeling the hook, as I
suppose, sprang out of water with it. I am almost ashamed to say that
I made no attempt to secure the thing, which was a comparatively small
specimen, but allowed it to amuse itself, until, to my great relief,
the hook broke, and I recovered the use of my line, my evening’s sport
quite spoiled.
These ugly monsters have as yet no commercial value, although from
their vast extent of flat surface they might be found worthy of
attention for their skins, which should make very excellent shagreen. A
closer acquaintance with them would also most probably divest them of
much of the terror in which they are held at present.
Another widely known and feared devil-fish has its headquarters in the
Northern Pacific, mostly along the American coast, especially affecting
the Gulf of California. This huge creature is a mammal, one of the
great whale family, really a rorqual of medium size and moderate yield
of oil. Like the rest of this much-detested and shunned (by whalers)
branch of the Cetacea, it carries but a tiny fringe of valueless
whalebone, and therefore, as compared with the sperm and “right”
whales, its value is small. Yet at certain seasons of the year the
American whaleships often think it worth their while to spend a month
or so bay-whaling in some quiet inlet unknown to, and uncared for by,
the bustling merchantman.
In these secluded spots the California devil-fish, mussel-digger,
grey-back, and several other aliases not fit for publication, but all
showing how the object of them is esteemed by his neighbours, may
sometimes be taken at a disadvantage, the cows languid just before or
after parturition, and the bulls who escort them too intent upon their
loves to be as wily as is their wont.
But only the _élite_ of the Yankee whalemen, dexterous and daring as
are all the tribe, can hope to get “to windward,” of the diabolically
cunning giants whom they abuse with such fluent and frequent flow of
picturesque profanity. It is a peculiar characteristic of this animal
that it seems ever on the alert, scarcely exposing for one moment its
broad back above the sea-surface when rising to spout, and generally
travelling, unlike all its congeners, not upon, but a few feet below,
the water. For this reason, and in this fishery alone, the whalers arm
themselves with iron-shafted harpoons, in order to strike with greater
force and certainty of direction a whale some distance beneath the
surface. A standing order, too, among them is never by any chance to
injure a calf while the mother lives, since such an act exposes all and
sundry near the spot to imminent and violent death.
Neglect of this most necessary precaution, or more probably accident,
once brought about a calamity that befell a fleet of thirteen American
whaleships which had been engaged in the “bowhead” fishery among the
ice-floes of the Arctic Pacific. In order to waste no time, they
came south when winter set in, and by common consent rendezvoused in
Margharita Bay, Lower California, for a month or two’s “devil-fishing.”
The whales were exceedingly abundant that season, and all the ships
were soon busy with as much blubber as they could manage. The ease with
which the whales were being obtained, however, led to considerable
carelessness and forgetfulness of the fact that the whale never
changes its habits. One bright morning, about three weeks after the
opening of the season, the whole flotilla of fifty-two boats, four
from each ship, had been lowered and were making their way as rapidly
as possible to the outlying parts of the great bay, keeping a bright
look-out for “fish.” Spreading out fan-wise, they were getting more and
more scattered, when about the centre of the fleet some one suddenly
“struck” and got fast to a fish. But hardly had the intimation been
given when something very like panic seized upon the crowd. In a moment
or two the reason was apparent. From some cause, never definitely
known, a harpooner had in striking at a large cow whale transfixed her
calf at her side with his harpoon, killing it immediately. The mother,
having quietly satisfied herself that her offspring was really dead,
turned upon her aggressors like a veritable demon of destruction, and,
while carefully avoiding exposure of her body to attack, simply spread
devastation among the flotilla. Whenever she rose to the surface, it
was but for a second, to emit an expiration like the hiss of a lifting
safety-valve, and almost always to destroy a boat or complete the
destruction of one already hopelessly damaged.
Every blow was dealt with an accuracy and appearance of premeditation
that filled the superstitious Portuguese, who formed a good half of
the crews, with dismay--the more so that many of them could only guess
at the original cause of what was really going on. The speed of the
monster was so great, that her almost simultaneous appearance at points
widely separated made her seem ubiquitous; and as she gave no chance
whatever for a blow, it certainly looked as if all the boats would be
destroyed _seriatim_. Not content with dealing one tremendous blow at a
boat and reducing it at once to a bundle of loose boards, she renewed
her attentions again and again to the wreckage, as if determined that
the destruction should be complete.
Utter demoralisation had seized even the veterans, and escape was the
only thought governing all action. But the distance to shore was great,
and the persistence and vigour of the furious leviathan, so far from
diminishing, seemed to increase as the terrible work went on. At last
two boats did succeed in reaching the beach at a point where it sloped
very gradually. The crews had hardly leaped overboard, to run their
craft up high and dry, when close behind them in the shallows foamed
and rolled their relentless enemy, just too late to reach them. Out
of the large number of well-equipped boats that left the ships that
morning, only these two escaped undamaged, and the loss of the season’s
work was irremediable. Over fifty men were badly injured, and six,
one of whom was the unhappy origin of the whole trouble, were killed
outright. The triumphant avenger of her slain offspring disappeared as
silently as she had carried on her deadly warfare, as far as could be
known unhurt, and with an accumulated hoard of experience that would,
if possible, render her more of a “devil” to any unsuspecting whalemen
who should hereafter have the misfortune to meet with and attack her
than she had proved herself to be already.
Dejected and crippled, the fleet lost no time in getting away from the
spot and fleeing north to San Francisco, there to refit for other and
more profitable fishing grounds.
There are a great many “ower-true” tales told of the prowess of this
wily creature, but the selection that I have made will doubtless
suffice for a fair specimen of what the California “devil-fish” is
capable of when opportunity arises.
The volatile and tuneful negroes of the West India islands have their
own peculiar “devil-fish,” but in this case there is nothing diabolical
in the appearance or vast in the size of the creature. It is, indeed,
a very well-known fish in most tropical waters, and must from its
habits and appearance be closely allied to the hake and pike. Among
seamen generally it is well known as the barracouta, and is especially
plentiful around the New Zealand coast, where a few hours of the
peculiar fishing practised by the Maories will generally reward the
fisherman with a gross or so of fish averaging 10 to 12 lb. each.