The Saint on the Spanish Main Read Free

bait is for a few seconds no longer
towed by the boat and drops back with convincing lifelessness, while the fish
that struck it circles into position to take a comfortable gulp at the
prospective snack. The precise timing of this wait is a matter of
fine judgment curbing the excitement of a suspense that makes seconds seem to stretch out into
minutes.
    “Now!” howled O’Kevin; and
even as he said it the Saint had flipped the drag on his reel, and
was lifting his rod tip up and back. “And again!” yelled the
captain, dancing a
little jig; but already the Saint was rearing back
again, so that the slender rod tip bowed in a sharp curve, tightening the line
strongly yet with a controlled smoothness
that would not snap it. “Again! That’s right! That should’ve hooked
the spalpeen—”
    A hundred and fifty yards astern the fish
shot up out of the water, shaking its head furiously, the whole mag nificent
streamlined length of it seeming to walk upright on its thrashing
tail. The sunlight flashed on its silver belly, shone on the
sleek midnight blue of its back, sten ciled the outline of the enormous
spread sail of dorsal fin from which the fish took its name. Then
after what seemed like an incredible period of levitation it fell
back into the sea with a mighty splash. The reel under Simon’s hand whined in protest
as the line tore off it.
    “Holy Mother of God,” said O’Kevin reverently. “That’s the biggest grandfather av a
sailfish these owld eyes iver hope to be gladdened be the sight av. If
it weighs one pound it’ll weigh a hundred
an’ twenty. No, it’s bigger’n that.
It’s twenty pounds bigger. It’s a world’s
record! … Des! Is it dreamin’ ye are?” As if waking out of a trance himself, he scrambled back
to the wheel, pushed his mate aside,
hauled back on the clutches and
gunned the engines, his gnarled hands mov ing with the lightning accuracy of a concert pianist’s. “Howld on, Simon me boy,” he breathed.
“Play him as gently as if ye had him tied to a cobweb, an’ me an’ the Colleen will do the rest!”
    If this story were about nothing but fishing, the chronicler could happily devote several pages to
a blow- by-blow account of the Saint’s
tussle with that specimen of Istiophorus
americanus; but they would be of interest mainly to fishermen. Those who have had a taste of light-tackle fishing for big-game fish know that
when you have more than a hundred
pounds of finny dynamite on the end
of a line which is only guaranteed to
support eighteen pounds of dead weight, you do not just crank the reel until you wind up your catch alongside the boat. All you can do is to apply
firm and delicate pressure, keeping
the line tight enough so that he
cannot throw off the hook, yet not so taut that it would snap at a sudden movement. If he decides to
take off for other latitudes, you
cannot stop him, you can only keep
this limited strain on him and wait for him to tire. But you also have only a limited length of line on your reel for him to run with, and if he takes all
of it you have lost him; so the boat must follow him quickly on every run so that he never gets too far away. In
this maneuvering the boat captain’s
skill is almost as vital as the
fisherman’s.
    Patsy O’Kevin was obviously an expert
captain, but on that occasion his eagerness turned his skill into a
liability. He was so anxious not to let a probable record get away, so
afraid of letting the Saint put too much strain on his frail line,
that he followed the fish as closely as a seasoned stock horse
herding a calf—so quickly and closely that the Saint had a job to keep any
pressure on the fish at all. And so there were several more jumps, and many
more runs, and time went on until it seemed to have lost
meaning; and then at last there was a mo ment when the fish
turned in its tracks and came to wards the boat like a torpedo, the Saint
reeling in fran tically, and O’Kevin for once was slow, and fumbled over
throwing the