Part 42 (2/2)
”There are lots of cases in which they are supposed to have done so,”
the director replied, ”but I think any such instances were probably swordfish who had been wounded--but not fatally You knew that the swordfish was the Monarch of all the Fish?”
”No,” Colin answered, ”I didn't”
”He was so elected at one of the ress of Fisheries,” said the director, s for the chairman or the speaker or somebody and in casual conversation the query arose as to as the real arded as the King of Beasts”
”And the swordfish got the award?”
”After quite a little debate Plenty of people had their own favorites, the white shark and the killer whale a others, but when it came to a sort of informal vote, the swordfish was chosen allad to pay h, as the director wheeled his chair to his desk, ”and I'ed for the opportunity”
The nexthauled the trap, Colin ju to New Bedford for supplies for the station, and which was to take hie portion of the surface of Buzzards Bay was dotted with billets of wood, about six inches thick and painted in all manner of colors Some were red, some white, some black, soaudy hues
”I've been wondering,” said Colin, as he stood in the pilot house chatting to the captain of the little steamer, ”what all those sticks in the water are?”
The captain took his pipe out of his mouth to stare at him in surprise, as he turned the wheel a spoke or two
”Don't you know that?” he said ”Those are lobster-pot buoys”
”You mean there's a lobster-pot attached to every one of those?”
”Yes, of course”
”But there are thousands of theht now, I can probably see forty or fifty, and they're not so awfully easy to catch sight of with a little sea running And why are they painted all different colors?”
”Different owners,” was the reply, ”every man has his own color Every day, or every other day at least, he sails out to the grounds--some of 'em now have motor-boats--and makes a round of his pots A chap whose buoy is yellow has perhaps a hundred or two yellow buoys scattered about the harbor”
”That sounds like work,” said Colin
”It's hard work,” was the reply ”A lobster-pot is weighted with bricks and it's a heavy load to pull up in a boat It's an aard thing to handle, too Then a lobsterman has to rebait his traps, and as he does that with rotten fish, it's not a sweet job And he can only bring in lobsters over a certain size; anything less than nine and a half inches in length he has to throw back Sometimes it'll happen that the traps are full of lobsters that are too short or too s hi in it, but that's about all”
Finding that the captain of the _Phalarope_ knew the lobster business well, as do ion, Colin kept hi questions until they ran into New Bedford As the old center of the whaling industry, the harbor had a great interest for Colin, but there was but one of the whaling shi+ps in at the tireatlythe river, just belohere the whaling piers used to be The swordfish schooners were at the pier, however, large as life, and Colin felt quite a thrill of excitement as he stepped aboard the little vessel on which he was to live for the next couple of days, and saw the narrow dark bunks in the entirely airless cabin in which fouras me, staying hothey were up, and by daybreak the schooner was standing out of the harbor for Block Island, one of the faht, and as always eager to be up and doing, volunteered to go to the crow's-nest and keep a lookout for the dorsal fin of a swordfish, which, he was told, could be seen a couple ofaloft, however, until toward noon, when, the water being still, the swordfish come up to sun themselves
Once Colin was quite sure that he saordfish, but just as he was about to shout, there flashed across his mind a sentence that he had read so a shark's fin with that of a swordfish, and soon he was able to reard noon and the sun's rays beat directly on hi two inches by four at the top of a schooner'sway fro a soft snap, but he would have scorned to h, when the cook hailed all hands to dinner, and one of the sailors went to the crow's-nest
At dinner Colin turned the conversation to swordfish and their ways
”There's one thing I don't quite understand, Dr Jimson,” he asked, ”is a spear-fish the same as a swordfish, only that the weapon is shorter?”
”Not at all,” was the reply, ”the spear-fish is a variety of the great sailfish, which you see in West Indian waters six or seven feet long, with a huge dorsal fin, blue with black spots, looe craft But the real difference is in the spear or sword In the case of the spear-fish it is bony, being a prolongation of the skull; in the case of the swordfish it is horny, and horns, as you probably know, are formations of skin rather than bone
Now the narwhal's tusk,” he continued, ”is again an entirely different thing”
”That's a tooth, isn't it?”
”Yes,” was the reply, ”it seems to be the mark of the enerally only one--on the left side The females have none at all You know the unicorn is always represented with a narwhal's tusk? One of the early travelers, Sir John de Mandeville or Marco Polo, I forget which, brought back a narwhal's tusk which, he had been told, had been taken from a kind of horse I really suppose that the native who sold it believed it was from some species of antelope But to this day the ar a fish's tooth sticking out from his forehead like an impossible horn”