by Wilbur Smith
They were being panicked and driven up by the great pelagic fish that circled in the depths below the shoals. It was one of those crazy days that occur all too seldom in a fisherman's life when there are simply too many fish. The ravenous predators were harrying the shoals so viciously that they were unable to feed. All their energy was diverted to avoiding the voracious charging monsters that tore through the shoals. They ignored the small finger-length feather lures with which the crew of Le Bonheur were trying to tempt them.
Standing on the flying bridge fifteen feet above the deck, Shasa could see deep into the limpid blue waters. He could clearly make out the hordes of bonito, like fat cigars as long as his forearm, dodging and ducking through Le Bonheur's wake. They almost touched the feather jigs as they darted past them.
"We need one - just one bait,' Shasa groaned. 'On a day like this it's an iron-clad guarantee of a marlin." Elsa Pignatelli leant over the bridge rail beside him. She wore only a tiny flaming scarlet bikini and she was tanned and smooth as a loaf of honey bread crisp from the oven.
"Lookv she cried, and Shasa whirled just in time to see a marlin come out of the water alongside Le Bonheur. It was driven high into the air by the speed and power of its own charge as it split a shoal of bonito. Its eyes were the size of tennis balls, and its spike was the length and thickness of a baseball bat. The water streamed from its flanks in silver cascades, and it wagged its great head in the air. In the excitation of the feeding frenzy, it had changed colour, like a chameleon, and burnt with bands of electric blue and lilac that turned the tropical blue of the sky pale in contrast.
"A granderp Shasa shouted the colloquial name for a fish that would push the scale beyond the mystic thousand pound mark.
The marlin fell back and hit the water flat on its side with a report like a shot of cannon.
"A bait!' cried Shasa, clutching his brow like a Shakespearian tragedian.
"My kingdom for a bait." The other half-dozen boats of the Black River fleet that they could see scattered to the horizon were suffering the same agonies. They could hear the frustrated lamentations of their skippers on the ship's radio. Nobody had bait, while out there the marlin were waiting to commit suicide.
"What can I do?' Elsa demanded. 'Do you want me to propound a little of my witchcraft and weave a spell for you?
"I don't know if that would be strictly ethical,' Shasa grinned back at her. 'But I'm willing to try anything. Weave away, my lovely witch!" She opened her purse and found her lipstick. 'Tom Thumb, Thomas i Becket, Rumpelstiltskin!' she mitoned solemnly, and drew a scarlet hieroglyph on his naked chest which had a distinctly phallic outline. 'I diddle you! I fiddle you! I doddle you! I doodle youp 'Oh yes. I love it,' Shasa laughed out loud. 'I could get seriously hooked on your type of magic." "You have to believe in it.' she warned him, 'or else it just won't work." 'I believe,' said Shasa fervently. 'Oh, how I believe in doodling youp Down on the deck below them one of the crew squealed suddenly, and they heard the tinny whirr of the ratchet on one of the small bait-rods.
Shasa's laughter was cut off abruptly. For an instant he stared at her with awe. 'Damn me! You really are a witch,' he muttered, and he dived for the ladder and slid down to the deck.
The deck-hand brought the skipjack bonito over the side and cradled him lovingly in his arms. The fish quivered and struggled, but he cushioned its fat round body against his chest. It was a pretty metallic blue and silver, with a pointed snout and sharp-bladed tail-fins. Its lower body was laced with lateral lines of black. Shasa saw with relief that it was lightly hooked in the hinge of the jaw. There was no damage to its gills.
He slipped the small hook from its jaw and ordered the deckie: 'Turn himv The deckie inverted the bonito, and immediately its struggles ceased.
Holding it upside down was a trick that disorientated and quietened it.
Shasa had his bait instruments laid out like those of a surgeon. He selected the long crochet-hook and worked it carefully into the front of the bonito's eye-socket. The blunt steel tip pushed the eyeball aside and did not damage it in the least.
He steered the needle into the natural canal through the bone of the fish's skull. The tip emerged from the same spot in the opposite eye-socket. The fish showed no sign of distress and lay quietly in the deckie's arms Shasa hooked a loop Of 120-lb Dacron line over the steel crochet-hook and gently drew the line back through the wound. He dropped the crochet-hook and snatched up the huge 12/0 marlin-hook. With a series of quick deft turns he had attached the hook firmly between the bonito's eyes. The fish was stiff alive and virtually unharmed. Its eyesight was unimpaired.
Shasa stood back and nodded to the deckie. He knelt on the gunwale and lowered the bonito over the side, solicitous as a nursemaid. As soon as it was released, the fish darted away, drawing the heavy steel trace and the attached Dacron line behind it. It disappedred almost instantly into the blue depths.
Shasa stood beside the fighting-chair. The stubby rod was set in the gimbal. The Fin-Nor Tycoon reel was made of gold-anodized marine-grade aluminium alloy. Still it weighed over five kilos and held over a kilornetre of the braided Dacron line. The line hissed softly as it streamed off the reel. Shasa adjusted the tension on it with a light touch of his fingertips.
He had marked the line with wraps of silk thread at intervals of fifty yards. He let out a measured hundred yards before he tightened the drag lever of the reel.
The deckie was already lowering the halyard of one of the twenty-foot outriggers that protruded like whippy steel antennae from each side of the hull. The purpose of the outriggcr was to hold the lines separated and to allow the slack bight of line to drop back when the marlin struck.
"No,' Shasa stopped him. 'I will hold it myself." This was a more precise method of determining the depth of the bait and amount of drop-back. However, it required patience and experience and fortitude to hand-
hold the line rather than merely to loll in the chair and leave it in the clip of the outrigger.
Carefully Shasa stripped a hundred feet of line off the big Fin Nor and coiled it on the deck. Then he perched on the stem of Le Bonheur and called to the skipper: 'Allez!" The skipper engaged the gear lever, and the propeller began to turn lazily.
The diesel engine was ticking over at idling revs and Le Bonheur began to inch forward against the scend of the swells.
Slowly she built up to a leisurely walking speed. The tension on the line in Shasa's hand increased. He could feel the weight of the bonito on the other end. The fish began to follow the boat like a dog on a leash. Shasa judged the depth of the bait by the angle at which the 11the entered the water. He could tell the condition and liveliness of the bonito by the faint vibration of its tail and the intermittent tugs and jerks it gave as it attempted to turn or dive.
Within minutes Shasa's arm was numb and cramping, but he ignored the discomfort and called up to Elsa on the bridge: 'How about a little more of your "fiddle me diddle me" magic?" 'It only works once.' She shook her head. 'From here on you are on your own." At slow speed Le Bonheur rolled sluggishly over the swells, and at Shasa's order began a wide and gentle turn up into the north.
Halfway through the turn, the line went slack in Shasa's hand and he stood up quickly from his seat on the gunwale.
"What is it?' Elsa called down eagerly.
"Probably nothing,' he grunted, but all his concentration was on the feel of the line.
It came taut again, but now the bonito's movements were altered. He could feel its frantic struggles transmitted through his fingertips. It ducked and dived and tried to turn, but the gentle progress of Le Bonheur drew it forward remorselessly.
"Attention!' Shasa alerted the crew.
"What's happening?' Elsa asked again.
"Something is frightening the bonito,' he answered. 'It's seen something down there." He could imagine the terror of the small fish as the gigantic shadow circled it stealthily in the blue underworld of the ocean. The marlin would be wary. The bonito was behaving u
nnaturally. It should have darted away instantly. The marlin stalked it gingerly, but soon its appetite would exceed its caution. Shasa waited a minute and another minute, crouched over the transom, rigid with excitement.
Suddenly the line was plucked from his fingers, but for an instant he felt the mighty weight and majesty of the marlin as it struck the bonito with the broad blunt edge of its spike.
"Strikep Shasa howled, holding both arms above his head. 'Stop engines!" Obediently the skipper slipped the gear lever into neutral, and Le Bonheur wallowed, dead in the water. Shasa picked up the line again and held it with the lightest pressure of his fingertips. It was slack; no sign of life. The. bonito had been killed instantly by that massive blow.
Vividly he imagined what was happening in those mysterious blue depths. The marlin had killed and now it circled again. It might lose interest, or become alarmed by the unnatural movement of the carcass. It was essential that no movement or drift on the line scared it off.
The seconds dripped like treacle, slow and sticky.
"He is making another circle,' Shasa tried to encourage himself. Still nothing happened.
"Il est parti,' the skipper announced lugubriously. '11 a refusd." 'I'll kick your pessimistic butt if you wish it on me,' Shasa told him furiously. 'He hasn't bloody well partied. He's coming around for another circle." The line twitched in his fingers, and Shasa let out a shout of relief.
"Le voilk! There he is!" Elsa clapped her hands. 'Eat, fish. Smell that lovely sweet flesh. Eat it," she implored.
The line jiggled and tugged softly, and Shasa let a few inches slide through his fingers. He could imagine the marlin picking up the carcass in its horny beak and turning it head-first to swallow it down.
"Don't let him feel the hook,' Shasa whispered a prayer. The loop of line should allow the point of the hook to lie flat against the bonito's head as it slid down the marlin's gaping maw. If, however, the loop had twisted or hung up - Shasa did not want to think about that.
There was another long pause, and then the line came taut again and began to move off with sedate but purposeful momentum.
"He's swallowed it,' Shasa exulted, and let the line flow through his fingers; coil after coil unwound from the deck and slipped away over the transom.
Shasa leapt to the swivel chair and swung himself into the seat. He clipped the harness to the rings on top of the glittering Fin-Nor reel. The harness formed a hammocklike sling around his lower back and buttocks and was attached directly to the reel.
Only the ignorant, or the deliberately misinformed, believed that the angler was buckled into the chair like a fighter pilot and that this gave him some sort of unsporting advantage. The only thing that kept him in the chair was his own strength and balance. If he made a mistake, the fish, weighing over a thousand pounds, as fast and powerful as a marine diesel engine, could pluck him and the rod effortlessly over the side and give him a very swift trip down to the five-hundred-fathom mark.
As Shasa settled behind the rod and engaged the brake, the line came up short against the spool and the rod-tip bowed over, as though it was kow-towing to the fish's brute strength.
Shasa thrust his feet against the foot board and took the strain with his legs.
"AJlez!' he yelled at Martin the skipper. 'Go!" The diesel bellowed as Martin opened the throttle wide and a dense cloud of oily black diesel smoke belched from 44e the exhausts. Le Bonheur leapt forward and crashed her shoulder into the swell.
No man had the strength to drive the point of the huge Mustad hook into the iron-hard mouth of the marlin. Shasa was using the power and speed of the boat to set the hook, to bury the barb deep in the horny beak. The spool of the reel hummed against its own massive brake-pads, and the line streamed away in a white blur.
"Arr8tez-vous!' Shasa judged that the hook was in. 'Stop!' he cried, and Martin closed the throttle.
They stopped and hung in the water. The rod was arched over as though the line were attached to the bottom of the ocean, but the reel was still ' held by the brake.
Then the fish shook his head, and the power of it crashed the butt of the rod back and forth in its gimbal as though it were a twig in a high wind.
"Here he goesp Shasa howled. The fish had been taken aback by the unexpected drag of the line, but even Le Bonheur had been unable to move his massive body against the drag of the water.
Now at last he realized that something was seriously wrong, and he made his first mad run. Once again the line poured off the reel in a molten blur, and Shasa was lifted high off the seat like a jockey pushing for the post.
So great was the friction in the massive Fin-Nor reel that it began to smoke. The grease on the bearings melted and boiled. It bubbled and spurted from the casing in steaming jets.
Leaning back with the full weight of his body, Shasa kept both hands well clear of the humming reel. The Dacron line was as dangerous as the blade of a butcher's bandsaw. It would take off a finger effortlessly or slash skin and flesh and muscle to the bone.
The fish ran as though there was no restraint upon him. The line on the spool melted away, three hundred yards were gone, then four, and in seconds half a kilometer of line had gone over the side.
"He's a goddam. Chinaman and he's going home to daddy,' Shasa yelled. "He's never going to stop!"
Abruptly the ocean parted in a maelstrom of white water, and the fish came out. Such was his girth and mass that he gave the illusion of moving in slow motion. He rose into the air, and the water poured from his body as though from the hull of a surfacing submarine. He came all the way out and, though he was five hundred yards from Le Bonheur, he seemed to blot out half the sky.
"Qu'il est grand!' shrieked Martin. Je n'ai jamais vu un autre comme qap And Shasa knew it was true - he had never seen a fish to match this one, not by half. He seemed to light the heavens with a reflected blue radiance, a flash of distant lightning.
Then, like a steeplechaser taking a fence, the fish reached the zenith of its leap and curved back to the surface of the ocean. It opened in a shockwave to his bulk, and then he was gone, leaving them all shaken by the memory of his majesty.
The line was blurring from the reel. Though Shasa had the brake dangerously heavy, pushing the drag up near the 12o-pound breaking-strain, it still streamed away as though there were no check upon it.
"Tournez-vous! Turn!' There was an edge of panic in Shasa's voice, as he yelled at the skipper; 'Turn and chase him!" With full rudder and opposite engine-thrust Martin spun the boat on its heel and they roared away in pursuit of the fish. Le Bonheur was rushing into wind and current, and the swells battered her. She dug her nose into them and burst them open in white spray. Then as she leapt over the crests she was almost airborne, and came pounding down into the troughs on her belly.
In the chair Shasa was thrown around mercilessly. He hung on to the arms of the chair, and rode the swells with his legs, his backside not touching the seat. The rod was bent like a longbow at full stretch. Even though Le Bonheur was running at full throttle, he was still losing line. The marlin was outrunning them by ten knots. The line on the reel wasted away, and Shasa watched helplessly as the spool seemed to shrink.
"Shasap Elsa shrieked from the bridge. 'He has turned!' She was so excited that she spoke in Italian. Shasa had by now enough practice with the language to understand her warning.
"Stop! Arr8tezp he howled at the skipper.
For no apparent reason the marlin had suddenly turned completely about and was charging back towards the boat.
This was not yet apparent from the direction that the line was running into the water. The marlin had thrown a half-mile loop in the line, which was potentially catastrophic. The side-drag of the loop in the water could snap the heavy line like cotton when the marlin came up tight on it. Elsa had spotted the turn in the very nick of time.