n a class by himself. To my mind
Wiborn is the ideal angler of the sea. I have aspired to his method, but
realize it is impossible for me. He goes out alone. Hence the name Lone
Angler. He operates his motor-launch, rigs his tackle and bait and
teasers, flies his kite, finds the fish, fights the one he hooks, and
gaffs and hauls it aboard or releases it, all by himself. Any one who
has had the slightest experience in Pacific angling can appreciate this
hazardous, complicated, and laborsome job of the Lone Angler. Any one
who ever fought a big tuna or swordfish can imagine where he would have
been without a boatman. After some of my fights with fish Captain
Danielson has been as tired as I was. His job had been as hard as mine.
But Wiborn goes out day by day alone, and he has brought in big tuna and
swordfish. Not many! He is too fine a sportsman to bring in many fish.

And herein is the point I want to drive home in my tribute to Lone
Angler. No one can say how many fish he catches. He never tells. Always
he has a fine, wonderful, beautiful day on the water. It matters not to
him, the bringing home of fish to exhibit. This roused my admiration,
and also my suspicion. I got to believing that Lone Angler caught many
more fish than he ever brought home.

So I spied upon him. Whenever chance afforded I watched him through my
powerful binoculars. He was always busy. His swift boat roamed the seas.
Always he appeared a white dot on the blue horizon, like the flash of a
gull. I have watched his kite flutter down; I have seen his boat stop
and stand still; I have seen sheeted splashes of water near him; and
more than once I have seen him leaning back with bent rod, working and
pumping hard. But when he came into Avalon on these specific occasions,
he brought no tuna, no swordfish--nothing but a cheerful, enigmatic
smile and a hopeful question as to the good luck of his friends.

"But I saw you hauling away on a fish," I ventured to say, once.

[Illustration: SEAL ROCKS]

"Oh, that was an old shark," he replied, laughing.

Well, it might have been, but I had my doubts. And at the close of 1918
I believed, though I could not prove, that Lone Angler let the most of
his fish go free. Hail to Lone Angler! If a man must roam the salt sea
in search of health and peace, and in a manly, red-blooded
exercise--here is the ideal. I have not seen its equal. I envy him--his
mechanical skill, his fearlessness of distance and fog and win