Part 42 (1/2)

”What is it, Colin?”

”It just occurred to me, sir,” the boy answered, ”that perhaps some parasite which would prey on the drill might be found.”

”It might--but I have as yet found none.”

”Or perhaps,” Colin again suggested, ”some chemical which would unite with lime might be put into the water so that the oyster sh.e.l.l might be poisonous to the drill, but not for food, because we eat the oyster and not the sh.e.l.l.”

The director laughed.

”That suggestion is new, at least,” he said, ”but I don't think it would work because this is a marine question and the water changes continuously. There must be some solution, there's always a way of doing everything, and some one will find it out. I'm going to stick at it till I do, that is, when I'm not engaged on other Bureau work. But I'm always glad of suggestions, and when you can help me in any way I'll let you know.”

”Thank you ever so much, Mr. Prelatt,” Colin answered; ”I'll be glad to do anything I can.”

The boy had a fertile brain, and, before a week had pa.s.sed by, a line of experiment suggested itself to him in connection with the oyster-drill problem and he explained it to the director.

”To work that out properly would take several years!” the latter said tentatively.

”I thought it would,” said Colin, ”but perhaps some one else could carry it on, and the work ought to be done, anyway.”

”You have the right idea,” the director replied; ”it's the problem, not the man who solves it. Now,” he continued, ”I have a surprise for you.

Dr. Jimson, who has been working on swordfish for some time, is anxious to try and capture a large specimen and is going out with a swordfish sloop next week. I can probably arrange for the trap to be looked after, if you are off for a day or two. Do you want to go?”

”Indeed I do,” said Colin. ”Mr. Wadreds was telling me some stories just the other day about swordfish-catching.”

”I suppose he told you the famous story of the swordfish which charged a vessel and drove its sword through 'copper sheathing, an inch board under-sheathing, a three-inch plank of hard wood, the solid white oak timber twelve inches thick, then through another two and a half-inch hard-oak ceiling, and lastly penetrated the head of an oil cask, where it stuck, not a drop of the oil having escaped?'”

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHAT SHALL WE GET THIS TIME?

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HERE'S A NEW ONE, BOYS!

The veteran collector of the Woods Hole Station is seen in the foreground of both pictures.

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

”Yes, Mr. Prelatt,” Colin answered, ”and if he hadn't told me that the record was authentic and that the sword and section of timber had been in the National Museum, I might have doubted it.”

”They're enormously powerful, one of the best boatmen I ever knew was killed by a swordfish,” said the director.

”How was that, sir?”

”He had harpooned the swordfish and had gone out in the small boat to lance it, when the huge fish dived under the craft and shot up from the bottom like a rocket, his sword going through the timbers as though they were paper and striking the boatman with such force that he was killed almost instantly. Boats used often to be sunk by the rushes of a swordfish, but nowadays the greater part of the work is done directly from the deck of a schooner. No amount of changes, however, can take all the excitement out of a swordfish capture.”

”Will they attack a boat unprovoked?”

”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.”