assumed
a strange, triangular shape, much like that of a kite. That, of course,
was when he extended the wide, waving sail. I was not able to see that
this sail afforded him any particular aid. It took me an hour to tire
out this sailfish, and when we got him in the boat he measured seven
feet and six inches, which was four inches longer than any record I
could find then.

At eleven o'clock I had another in the boat, making four sailfish in
all. We got fourteen jumps out of this last one. That was the end of my
remarkable luck, though it was luck to me to hook other sailfish during
the afternoon, and running up the number of leaps. I am proud of that,
anyway, and to those who criticized my catch as unsportsman-like I could
only say that it was a chance of a lifetime and I was after photographs
of leaping sailfish. Besides, I had a great opportunity to beat my
record of four swordfish in one day at Clemente Island in the Pacific.
But I was not equal to it.

* * * * *

I do not know how to catch sailfish yet, though I have caught a good
many. The sport is young and it is as difficult as it is trying. This
catch of mine made fishermen flock to the Stream all the rest of the
season, and more fish were caught than formerly. But the proportion held
about the same, although I consider that fishing for a sailfish and
catching one is a great gain in point. Still, we do not know much about
sailfish or how to take them. If I got twenty strikes and caught only
four fish, very likely the smallest that bit, I most assuredly was not
doing skilful fishing as compared with other kinds of fishing. And there
is the rub. Sailfish are not any other kind of fish. They have a wary
and cunning habit, with an exceptional occasion of blind hunger, and
they have small, bony jaws into which it is hard to sink a hook. Not one
of my sailfish was hooked deep down. Yet I let nearly all of them run
out a long line. Moreover, as I said before, if a sailfish is hooked
there are ten chances to one that he will free himself.

[Illustration: MEMORABLE OF LONG KEY]

[Illustration: LEAPING SAILFISH]

This one thing, then, I believe I have proved to myself--that the
sailfish is the gamest, the most beautiful and spectacular, and the
hardest fish to catch on light tackle, just as his brother, the Pacific
swordfish, is the grandest fish to take on the heaviest of tackle.

Long Key, indeed, has its charm. Most all the ang