keg was thrown into the sea, to follow | and eventually wear out the gamey fish.

The fore-, main-, and gaff-topsails were now clapped on to the Thumbscrew, and, with the white spot moving ahead for bearing, she plunged on in pursuit.

"Starn chase," said the captain; "but we'll hev him in half an hour, yaou mark. Let's see: I was about tellin' of my first so'd-fish. Well, as I was a-sayin', I was powerful green,-spent most o' the time a-mumin' araound the farm. After a time I got a-coastin' on father's vessel, and one summer he couldn't get no work for her, so I says, says I, Father, let me take the schooner and go a-fishin'. She bein' insured and hogged [broken-backed], he agreed. So the next night we was off and bound up to George's Banks, not a livin' soul of us ever havin' been there afore, and all young and fresh as a spare room. We hed poor luck on the banks, for the reason thet I found aout after,—we hed never struck the banks at all, and hed been a-cod-fishin' on sand bottom. Howsomever, we worked up the coast, havin' no charts, from p'int to p'int, and from light to light, for several days; then, water runnin' low, we hailed lumberman bound daown, who gave us the bearin's of a place to north'ard and east'ard. We kept up till we struck a bay and run abaout seventy-five miles; then, night a-comin' on, we come to anchor abaout three miles from shore, in about nine fathoms, and, everythin' bein' snug, all hands, four of us, turned in in hammocks slung in the hold, that bein' the coolest place. Well, the next mornin' John Hanson sings aout, 'D'ye hear thet, Sam?'-'What?' says I.Hogs,' says he.-'Go 'long!' says I. But, sure enough, there was the darndest gruntin' and squealin' I ever heard. 'Queer country this,' says John; hogs swim aout to vessels.' The gruntin' was a-gettin' wuss and wuss, so I reached aout my head, and it was jest light enough to see the snout of a big sow lookin' daown the hold. Thet settled it. When it came tew a drove of hogs swimmin' off tew a vessel and climbin'

a

aboard, it was sartin time tew turn aout. I rolled aout first, and daown I went: the old schooner hed a lurch to port on her so you couldn't stand up. 'We're gone daown,' says Hanson, rollin' aout. -Nonsense!' says I; 'she's on her beam ends;' and with thet we all made a break for the hatch and come on deck. I ain't no hand to be took aback, but there we sot on the combin' of the hatch in a regular sog. She was high and dry, with twenty fathoms of cable aout, and hogs a-feedin' and rootin' araound the starn-post, and some on 'em on deck. Ye couldn't see water fur ten miles away. We was powerful sot back. 'Is she insured?' says John.-'I believe she is,' says I.- Well,' says John, 'somethin's happened,-'arthquake, or a powerful parch,-and I'm fur strikin' in.' So we packed up and walked ashore through the mud, nigh on to three miles. At last we come across a man. 'What station is this?' says John Hanson.'Thet's Monckton over there,' says he. -What's the flat called?' says John.

เ

Oh,' says the man, 'this 'ere's the Bay o' Fundy, and ef you're a-goin' to Monckton ye'd better shake a leg afore floodtide.'- High tides here?' says John, kind o' knowin'-like. Tolerable,' says the man a like o' fifty feet or so.' "Well, three days later we was to home and aout o' commission. We'd never heard o' no big tides, and I reckon this is the first time the tellin' o' thet 'ere master parch has been let aout. Dretful green!—dretful!" And Captain Sam leaned over the binnacle, grew a deeper red, and laughed spasmodically, gradually regaining his former equilibrium.

"And the sword-fish?" we asked.

"Oh, yes, the so'd-fish. Well, we found it alongside, left by the tide that's what the hogs was after."

During this recital we had been gaining on the keg, and now, at a word from the skipper, the dory that was bounding along astern was hauled alongside, the painter tossed in, and the entire port watch, numbering two souls, and the writer as volunteer, literally tumbled in, and were soon moving toward the

jumping buoy, that was now almost stationary.

Yaou clap on to the keg, mister," said John, the veritable Hanson of the great parch, "and we'll lay you alongside."

A few sturdy strokes, and the dory swung by and was secured; oars were jerked in, and not a moment too soon was the line slipped into a crotch in the bow, for the gamey fish, feeling the line tauten, leaped into activity, jerking the volunteer ignominiously among the bailers.

The word "stern all" was not needed; we were all there, and, with bow half under, were headed out, taking everything as it came. A fair sea was running, and soon our small craft started an opposition wave, that, curling several feet ahead, seemed leading us to victory or a capsize.

6.

She won't heft many o' them," said John, as a big wave came sloshing in upon us. "We'll have to get in that slack." And, seizing the line, he passed it aft. The struggle, three to one, commenced. To gain a fathom of line was hard work, the fish now using desperate efforts, making long surges to the right and left, or cleaving the waves its entire length, in vain endeavors for freedom. In twenty minutes we were in sight of the monster, and, with a shout, all hands laid on, and the game was alongside.

"Pass the line astern!" yelled John, and in the struggle down we went with a crash, quickly climbing to windward to avert the catastrophe threatened by the line fouling in a row-lock. For a moment we were upon a dizzy height on the upper rail; then the line slackened and cleared, and with a rush was passed to the scull-hole in the stern.

"Lay on naow, hard!" shouted some one, and lay on we did, knee-deep in the water shipped during the flurry. One good pull all together, and the line was "chock up," and the fish fast astern. The volunteer venturing to prospect the field, the ugly sword came flying over the dory, creating a "down-bridge" movement. The sinewy form bent in great curves, straightening out with ex

treme rapidity, making slashing blows against the boat, while the sharp tail quivered and glanced, cutting the water like a knife.

To the disinterested observer it would have been sublime. The volunteer, being in the front row, was moved from not altogether humanitarian feelings to cut the rope; but this now proved unnecessary: the game was up. The gallant swordsman was weakening; the slashes, rushes, and bounds became less frequent, and finally, as the sharp sword came against the gunwale, John Hanson caught it with a round turn and securely lashed it high out of water: the gamey fish was hors de combat.

"It's kind of a question in my mind," shouted Captain Sam, as the Thumbscrew rounded to, 66 whether you caught the fish or he caught you."

The painter was thrown aboard, and a running bow-line passed around the fish's tail, and as the dory dropped astern the Xiphias gladius was hoisted aboard, the schooner filling away to bide the call of the fresh man who now went aloft. The fish proved to be nearly eleven feet long, with a perfect sword three and a half feet in length and so impregnable that it had received no damage from the heavy blows against the dory. Every feature betokened speed and activity; the whole appearance was rakish, that of the privateer; the dorsal was tall and graceful, the tail keeled, the lower jaw sharp, and the back a rich bluish black grading off to a clear silvery white below.

"He's good fur eight dollars," remarked Captain Sam, as we went aft after relieving the monster of several parasites-penella, filosa, etc.-that infested him.

"Ye see," he continued, "they're a kind o' mackerel,-belong to the same family,-and there's always a big demand fur 'em. Strike a ship? Well, I should say so. I shipped several years ago on the Maria Jane from Gloucester, and, while a-mackerel-fishin', we was struck by a so'd-fish. The first thing we knowed, the wheel wouldn't work, and, on lookin' over, there was a sword

a-stickin' in between the rudder and the post, broken off short, and it took us a couple of hours to get it aout. I reckon it kills 'em in the long run. It's a common thing fur us to strike 'em without

any swords. Sometimes they break 'em in whales, or against vessels; and I've hauled 'em in when their heads was all mud, showin' how they'd rushed ag'in the bottom and perhaps broken it off in that way. But when the sword's gone they're always poor: so it makes me think they don't feed without it. The habit's so strong in 'em to strike a fish that they think they must do it. Why, I've tossed a dead porgy to one and seen him knock it up and daown, jist like a game o' bat and ball, afore he'd touch it, and then kind o' slide

under and come up and take it. I've caught 'em on a hook and line, and in a herrin'-net, and bought a new net, tew, with the very money I got fur 'em; obliged ter do it. But there's one curious thing: ye can't find a so'd-fisherman on the coast of Maine thet, winter or summer, ever see a young one,

or one less than seventy-five pound. they hev young; but I've heard tell haow they breed on the other side of the water."

The captain's idea was the right one, and, on careful inquiry, the writer could not find a fisherman on the coast that

had ever seen a young sword-fish. They belong to one of a number, including the tunny, that cross the Atlantic, depositing their eggs, for some unknown reason, on European shores. In the Mediterranean Sea, the females approach the shore in the latter part of spring or the first of summer. The white compact flesh of the young fish is held in great esteem, that of the adult resembling the tunny, and preferred to the sturgeon or halibut, which it somewhat resembles in flavor.

The young sword-fish differ greatly in appearance from the adult. The young of the genus Histiophorus, when about nine millimetres long, have jaws of equal length, armed with sharp teeth; the supra-orbital margin is ciliated; the parietal and præoperculum are prolonged into long spines; the dorsal and anal fins are a low fringe; and the ventrals make their appearance as a pair of short buds. When fourteen millimetres long, the young fish has still the same armature on the head, but the dorsal fin has become much higher, and the ventral filaments have grown to a great length. At a third stage, when the fish has attained to a length of sixty millimetres, the upper jaw is considerably prolonged beyond the lower, losing its teeth; the spines of the head are shortened, and the fins assume nearly the shape which they retain in mature individuals. Young sword-fishes without ventral fins (Xiphias) undergo similar changes; and, besides, their skin is covered with small rough excrescences longitudinally arranged, which continue to be visible after the young fish has in other respects assumed the mature form.

The sword-fish industry on the Maine coast and south of Cape Cod is an important one, employing a large number of men and boats. The pursuit is one of the most ancient on record. Strabo mentions it as having been followed in the days of Ulysses. Pliny associates the fish with several others as "suitable to use as salted fish," and Rondelet describes it under the name "Poisson nommé Empereur." In the Greek it was Xiphias; in the Latin, Gladius;

the Italians call it Pesce spada; while in France it is known as Héron du mer, and Poisson empereur.

In the Straits of Messina the fishery is of great importance, numbers of men from Messina and Reggio being employed. The boats at night are lighted with huge flambeaux, which are supposed to attract the fish, while a man stationed aloft upon a single mast announces the approach of the game. The Sicilian fishermen, as well as those of Reggio, chant a peculiar jargon during the chase, supposed to be a sentence in Greek, to charm the fish within reach of their harpoons, the common belief being that if the fish hears a word of Italian he will dart to the bottom. Kircher took down the words, and found that they were more like Hebrew; and he suggests that they are a remnant of the ancient Phoenician tongue.

There are three genera well known: the common Xiphias, a species of which is found in South American waters twenty-five feet long, the bill- or bayonet-fish (Tetrapturus), and the great sail- or sailor-fish (Histiophorus) of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. The last attains a length of twenty-five or thirty feet, the enormous dorsal fin being ten feet in height, and presenting a strange appearance, rushing along out of water and scintillating with blue and golden tints.

Many interesting cases illustrating the pugnacity of these swordsmen have been recorded. Sir Joseph Banks cites an instance where the entire sword was driven into the solid wood of a ship; and in another case, in which the sword had penetrated the copper sheathing and three and a half inches of solid oak, competent judges estimated that to drive a pointed bolt of iron of the same size and form to the same depth would require nine or ten blows of a hammer weighing thirty pounds.

Professor G. Brown Goode, Curator of the National Museum, in his material for the history of the sword-fishes, enumerates various instances showing that, far from being unusual, these attacks of sword-fish are of yearly occurrence.

One of the earliest recorded cases is found in vol. i. of Purchas's Pilgrims: "1615. Off the coast of Sierra Leone: "The fift of October we were vnder foure degrees seuen and twentie minutes, the same day about noone, there was such a noyse in the Bough of our Shippe, that the master, being behind in the Gallerie, thought that one of the men had fallen out of the Foreship, or from the Boe-sprit into the Sea; but as hee looked out over the side of the Ship, hee saw the Sea all red, as if great store of bloud had been powred into it, whereat hee wondred, knowing not what it meant, but afterward hee found that a great Fish or a Sea monster having a horne had therewith stricken against the Ship with most great strength. For when we were in Porto Desire where we set the Ship on the Strand to make it clean, about seven foot under water, before in the Ship, we found a Horne sticking in the Ship, much like for thicknesse and fashion to a common Elephant's tooth, not hollow, but full, very strong hard Bone, which had entered into three Plankes of the Ship, that is two thicke Plankes of greene and one of Oken wood, and so into a Rib, where it turned upward, to our great good fortune, for if it had entered between the Ribbes it would happily have made a greater Hole, and have brought both Ship and men in danger to be lost. It strucke at least half a foote deep into the Ship and about half a foote without, where with great force it was broken off, by reason whereof the great monster bled so much."

Mortimer, writing in the eighteenth century, says,—

"Mr. Bankley shewed me the horn of a fish that had penetrated above eight inches into the timber of a ship, and gave me the following relation of it His Majesty's Ship Leopard, having been at the West Indies and on the coast of Guiney, was ordered by warrant from the Honorable Navy-Board, dated August 18, 1725, to be cleaned and refitted at Portsmouth for Channel service. Pursuant thereto, she was put into the great stone dock, and, in strip

ping off her sheathing, the shipwrights found something that was uncommon in her bottom, about eight feet from her keel, just before the fore-mast, which they searching into, found the bone or part of the horn of a fish of the figure here described; the outside rough, not unlike seal-skin, and the end where it was broken off showed itself like coarse ivory. The fish is supposed to have followed the ship when under sail, because the sharp end of the horn pointed toward the bow. It penetrated with that swiftness or strength that it went through the sheathing, one inch thick, the plank, three inches thick, and into the timber four and a half inches.'

In 1787 a fishing-vessel, the Balandia, was sunk by a sword-fish; and near home, in 1871, the little yacht Red Hot, of New Bedford, used by Professor Baird in the Fish Commission, was sent to the bottom in the same way.

In the London Daily News of December 11, 1868, the following statement occurs:

"Last Wednesday the Court of Common Pleas rather a strange place, by the bye, for inquiring into the natural history of fishes-was engaged for several hours in trying to determine under what circumstances a sword-fish might be able to escape scot-free after thrusting his snout into the side of a ship. The gallant ship Dreadnought, thoroughly repaired, and class A 1 at Lloyds', had been insured for three thousand pounds against all the risks of the seas. She sailed on March 10, 1864, from Colombo, for London. Three days later, the crew, while fishing, hooked a sword-fish. Xiphias, however, broke the line, and a few moments afterward leaped half out of the water, with the object, it should seem, of taking a look at his persecutor, the Dreadnought. Probably he satisfied himself that the enemy was some abnormally large cetacean, which it was his natural duty to attack forthwith.

Be this as it may,

the attack was made, and at four o'clock the next morning the captain was awakened with the unwelcome intelligence that the ship had sprung a leak. She