ice- or snow-field. Above this, at a height of about ten
feet, glittered a palpitating silver canopy, almost blinding in its
sparkle and its sheen.

"What is that?" asked Colin, wondering.

"The tuna feeding and coming down the coast," was the reply.

As it drew nearer, Colin saw that the gleaming silver canopy was formed
of thousands upon thousands of flying-fish, skimming through the air,
dropping to the water every fifty yards or so, then, with a single twist
of the screw-like tail, rising in the air for another soaring flight.

Below, from the surface of the water broken to foam by the tumult, would
leap those tremendous jumpers of the sea, the tuna, plunging through the
living cloud of flying-fish, and dropping to feed upon those which fell
stunned under their impetuous charges. Occasionally, but very rarely, a
tuna would seize its fish in midair, and it was marvelous to see a fish
nearly as large as a man spring like a bolt from a cross-bow out of the
sea, often until it was ten feet above the water, then turn and plunge
back into the ocean.

"We'd better get out of here, I think," Major Dare said to the boatman;
"this is getting to be too much of a good thing."

But, as he said the word, the school of flying-fish swerved right in the
direction of the boat, and in a minute the anglers were surrounded. The
silent, skimming flight of the long-finned flying-fish, the boiling of
the sea, lashed to fury by the pursuing tuna, and these living
projectiles, hurled as a silvered bolt into the air, frightened Colin
not a little, although he was enjoying the experience thoroughly.

"Look out you don't get struck by a flying-fish," his father called to
him, bending low in his seat. Colin, who had not thought of this
possibility, followed suit rapidly, because the California flying-fish,
unlike his Atlantic cousin, is a fish sometimes eighteen inches long,
and he saw that if he were struck by one in the full speed of its
skimming flight, he might easily be knocked overboard.

"Can't they see where they are going?" asked the boy.

"They can see well enough," his father answered, "but they have little
or no control over their flight. They can't change the direction in
which they are going until they touch water again. That's how the tuna
catches them, it swims under in a straight line and grabs the fish as it
comes down to get impetus for another flight."

"But I thought flying-fish went ever so much higher than that!"