umps and windings
did I feel him. Then heavy and strong came the weight. I jerked and
reeled. But I did not get a powerful strike on that fish. Suddenly the
line slacked and my heart contracted. He had shaken the hook. I reeled
in. Bait gone! He had doubled on me and run as swiftly toward the boat
as he had at first run from it.

The hook had not caught well. Probably he had just held the bait between
his jaws. The disappointment was exceedingly bitter and poignant. My
respect for _Xiphius_ increased in proportion to my sense of lost
opportunity. This great fish thinks! That was my conviction.

We sighted another that refused to take a bait and soon went down.

We had learned the last few days that broadbills will strike when not on
the surface, just as Marlin swordfish do.

On our next day out we had smooth sea all morning, with great,
slow-running swells, long and high, with deep hollows between. Vast,
heaving bosom of the deep! It was majestic. Along the horizon ran dark,
low, lumpy waves, moving fast. A thick fog, like a pall, hung over the
sea all morning.

About eleven o'clock I sighted fins. We made a circle round him, and
drew the bait almost right across his bill. He went down. Again that
familiar waiting, poignant suspense!... He refused to strike.

Next one was a big fellow with pale fins. We made a perfect circle, and
he went down as if to take the bait!... But he came up. We tried again.
Same result. Then we put on an albacore and drew that, tail first, in
front of him. Slowly he swam toward it, went down, and suddenly turned
and shot away, leaving a big wake. He was badly scared by that albacore.

Next one we worked three times before he went down, and the last one
gave us opportunity for only one circle before he sank.

They are shy, keen, and wise.

The morning following, as we headed out over a darkly rippling sea, some
four miles off Long Point, where we had the thrilling strikes from the
big swordfish, and which place we had fondly imagined was our happy
hunting-ground--because it was near shore and off the usual fishing
course out in the channel--we ran into Boschen fighting a fish.

This is a spectacle not given to many fishermen, and I saw my
opportunity.

With my glass I watched Boschen fight the swordfish, and I concluded
from the way he pulled that he was fast to the bottom of the ocean. We
went on our way then, and that night when I got in I saw his wonderful
swordfish, the world's