d make his
fingers fly, even the big multiplier on the reel had failed to bring in
all the slack. The tuna, panic-stricken by the strange line that hissed
behind him and which he could neither outrace nor shake off, tried to
charge the loops of twine that the reel had not yet been able to bring
in. The sea fairly seemed to boil as the fin of the tuna cut through the
water at the surface.

"Look out now, Colin," the boy's father called. "He'll see the boat in a
minute!"

He did. On the instant he saw the launch and the three men in it, and in
the very midst of his charge, the body bent and shot into the depths
again.

"Watch out for the jerk!" the older angler cried, and as the fish
reached the end of the slack line there was a sudden tug which Colin
felt sure meant a lost fish. But his father's warning had come in time,
and by releasing the thumb-brake entirely when the tug came, the reel
was free, and it rattled out another fifty feet, the boy gradually
beginning to apply the pressure again and to feel the tuna at the end of
the line.

One hundred, two hundred, three hundred feet of line reeled out at this
second great rush, and the older man began to look grave as the big reel
grew empty.

"Ought I to try and stop him with the brake, Father?" asked the boy.

"Better not try too hard," came the cautious answer, "the weight of the
line that is out is a heavy pull on him. Unless he's a monster he'll
have to stop soon."

Fifty feet more of line ran out before the rush stopped, and then a
change of action at the other end of the line telegraphed the message to
the boy's fingers that the tuna, for the first time in its life, had
felt fatigue. From over four hundred feet away Colin felt the call and
realized that now he might expect a victory if only he could keep up the
fight to the end and never make a slip. One error, he knew, would be
fatal; one jerk, and the line would snap, one strain too great, and the
strands would give way.

He began to reel in. His back ached and his fingers became cramped, but
still he reeled, every fifty feet or so having to let the line run out
as the tuna made a rush, so that a quarter of an hour's careful bringing
in would be spoiled in thirty seconds. In forty minutes of heartbreaking
strain, the boy had gained not more than forty feet of line, but he was
game and stuck to it manfully. Reeling in carefully, the fish either
sulking or resting, in the next few minutes he won his grea