oke. Dan had to bind the
cracked rod with heavy pieces of wood and they added considerable weight
to what had before felt like a ton.

The fish had been hooked at eleven o'clock and it was now five. We had
drifted or been pulled into the main channel, where strong currents and
a choppy sea made the matter a pretty serious and uncomfortable one.
Here I expended all I had left in a short and furious struggle to bring
the fish up, if not to gaff, at least so we could see what he looked
like. How strange and unfathomable a feeling this mystery of him gave
rise to! If I could only see him once, then he could get away and
welcome. Captain Dan, in anticipation of a need of much elbow room in
that cockpit, ordered my brother and the ladies to go into the cabin or
up on top. And they all scrambled up and lay flat on the deck-roof, with
their heads over, watching me. They had to hold on some, too. In fact,
they were having the time of their lives.

My supreme effort brought the fish within the hundredth foot length of
line--then my hands and my back refused any more.

"Dan, here's the great chance you've always hankered for!" I said. "Now
let's see you pull him right in!"

And I passed him the rod and got up. Dan took it with the pleased
expression of a child suddenly and wonderfully come into possession of a
long-unattainable toy. Captain Dan was going to pull that fish right up
to the boat. He was! Now Dan is big--he weighs two hundred; he has arms
and hands like the limbs of a Vulcan. Perhaps Dan had every reason to
believe he would pull the fish right up to the boat. But somehow I knew
that he would not.

My fish, perhaps feeling a new and different and mightier hand at the
rod, showed how he liked it by a magnificent rush--the greatest of the
whole fight--and he took about five hundred feet of line.

Dan's expression changed as if by magic.

"Steer the boat! Port! Port!" he yelled.

Probably I could not run a boat right with perfectly fresh and well
hands, and with my lacerated and stinging ones I surely made a mess of
it. This brought language from my boatman--well, to say the least, quite
disrespectable. Fortunately, however, I got the boat around and we ran
down on the fish. Dan, working with long, powerful sweeps of the rod,
got the line back and the fish close. The game began to look great to
me. All along I had guessed this fish to be a wonder; and now I knew it.

Hauling him close that way angered him. He ma