mittee of the club, and in his presence the fish was put on
the scales. It proved not to be as large as Vincente had thought, being
but one hundred and four pounds, but this was a clear margin over the
hundred, and Colin was just as well pleased as if it had been a hundred
and forty.

He was eager beyond words to know what would be the verdict of the club,
but as the catch had been officially registered, was thoroughly within
the rules, and Major Dare was a valued member of the club, it was
unanimously agreed that a blue button should be awarded to Colin. He was
accordingly elected to junior membership and so received it. The next
two weeks passed all too quickly for the boy, for he got the fishing
fever in his veins, and if he had not been held in check, he would have
stayed on the water night and day. He made a very creditable record,
getting a thirty-pound yellow-tail and several good-sized white sea-bass
and bonito. But he never even got a bite from one of the big black
sea-bass, though his father made a splendid four-hour fight, landing a
two-hundred-pounder. The lad's tuna of a hundred and four pounds, also,
was far outdone by one his father caught ten days later, which scaled
exactly one hundred and seventy pounds.

Three times, in the next two weeks, Colin found himself again fast to a
tuna, but was unable to land any of the three. His first he lost by
jerking too quickly at the strike. The second walked away with his
entire six hundred feet of line at the first rush, and probably was a
fish beyond the rod and reel capacity, and the third broke the line
suddenly in some unexplained way, possibly, the boatman said, because
the tuna had been seized by a shark when down in thirty fathoms of
water.

"Does the tuna live on flying-fish only, Vincente?" asked Colin of the
boatman, a couple of days before he was going to leave.

"Mos'ly zey do, sair, I t'ink," was the reply, "zat is, when zey can get
dem. But zey'll eat nearly any fish an' zey are quite fon' o' squid.
Some fishermen use squid for tuna bait, but I don't t'ink much of ze
idea."

"Let's see," said the boy thoughtfully, "a squid is something like an
octopus, isn't it?"

"Well, no, sair, not exac'ly," the boatman answered. "Bot' of zem have
arms wavin' around, but zey look quite diff'rent, I t'ink. An' a squid
has ten arms, but an octopus has jus' eight."

"Eight's enough, it seems to me," said Colin. "And are there many of
them here? I suppose ther