by Grey, Zane
Captain Mitchell whipped his mako, after a good hard battle in a bad sea. The fish had chewed off one of our best wire leaders and would certainly have escaped but for a loop of the leader being round his tail.
We ran back to discover two other boats engaged on fish of some kind. Alma Baker was on one of them. Upon going close to him I found he had a long, slim, ugly blue-colored shark which his boatman was holding by the leader. I took a picture. I had to bite my tongue to keep from yelling to that boatman, for I knew he would break the brute off; and he did.
During the rest of the afternoon there were indications of a change in the weather, which we certainly welcomed. Upon arriving at camp we weighed our fish. My Marlin tipped the scales at two hundred and seventy-six, the Captain's mako at two hundred and ninety-four. The leader was a sight to behold and caused me much concern. We had prepared especial thirty-foot mako leaders, heavy wire that we had believed was indestructible. What would we do if we hooked some really big mako?
The wind kept deceiving us, veering and lulling, blowing a gale at night, falling in the morning and then rising again. It made heavy seas. On February fourth I lost two fish, one a hammer-head that first bit my bait in two, then came back for the second portion. He was cunning and I was rather careless. There is never any excuse for not hooking a hungry shark. In this case I did not wait long enough, so that when I struck the hook did not hold. My second misfortune was on a Marlin of goodly size, that I worked too strenuously, and the hook pulled out as I brought him into the boat.
The next day was fine and promising at dawn, but the sun and calm were only delusions. A northwester sprang up, and blew harder every minute. There were seven boats out and they had a sorry time of it. Nevertheless I had a wonderful strike from a Marlin that shot by the boat and came out in a beautiful leap before I had time to hook him, but the hook held. We had to chase this fellow out into the rough sea, where I had another hard battle with fish and swells combined. He took us a mile off Piercy Rock. One other boat got fast to a Marlin and went out to sea so far that we lost sight of it altogether. Pretty risky in a small boat! I asked my men how these fellows would communicate their difficulties if the boat broke down or they ran short of gasoline. They said there would be no way. No accidents had happened at this new fishing resort, so the serious side of the game had not received any consideration.
The gale increased, and I thought it best to run in. Before we got far I was indeed glad I had started. The sea was running "high, wide and handsome", as the cowboys sometimes call the bucking of a mean bronco. The Alma G. proved a seaworthy craft and gave me confidence. Her bow was under water a good deal of the time, and she became as wet as a duck in the rain. When we got in the green shallow water the swells ran tremendously high and swift. They lifted us and sped us forward, so that with the added celerity we were indeed racing. Exhilarating and thrilling as that was, I was glad to run in between the first islands to smooth water. My Marlin was a superb specimen of two hundred and sixty-eight pounds, long, slim, brilliantly striped and with a very long spear. If he had been fat he would have weighed far over three hundred.
About supper time a heavy squall swooped down into the bay. We had to exert ourselves hurriedly and strenuously to keep our camp from blowing away. Both the launches dragged their anchors and grounded on the bar at low tide, wherefore the boatmen were most actively engaged during the gale and a downpour of rain. For me it was all fun. To be out in a rainstorm always takes me back to boyhood days.
About sunset the clouds broke up into irregular masses, the gale subsided, patches of vivid blue sky shone through rifts, and an exquisite light, as if the air were full of dissolved rainbows, began to be manifest on all sides.
The phenomenon lured me to climb the high slope and wade through the wet grass to the summit, where I could face the glorious west. Rain blew in my face, a cool, misty rain that did not obscure my sight, though evidently it had remarkable effect upon the atmosphere. A strange transparent medium enveloped earth and sky. The sun had set below a strip of dark cloud. Behind that the intense blue sky reached to broken cumulus clouds, purple in mass, edged with silver, shot through with rays of gold. From this great flare of the west spread the beautiful light over range and islands, bays and hills. The slopes with their waving grass were crowned by an amber glow; the bay on the leeward side of the island was a deep dark green; that on the windward side a white-ridged purple. From over the far hill thundered the turbulent sea. To the south the mountains showed dimly through the pall of storm that had passed over the Bay of Islands. The whole panorama seemed to possess an unearthly beauty, delicate, ephemeral, veiled by some mysterious light.
To make the moment perfect there were larks above my head, singing as if the magic of that sunset inspired their song. My searching gaze located three--one near, scarcely a hundred feet above me; another quite far; and a third a mere speck in the sky. There were others I could not find. Those I watched poised fluttering on high, singing such a sweet plaintive song as was surely never equaled by other bird, both in melody and in meaning. They were singing in the rain; and to my intense astonishment I ascertained, quickly in case of the nearer larks and after hard peering at the third, that they had their heads pointed to the west. This might have been accident; but I was not one who could deem it so. Nor were they singing for any other reason save the joy of life! I watched them until they dropped, wafted straight down, to cease their songs as they neared the ground. Two of them alighted in the wet grass and did not arise; the third dropped out of sight behind the hill. Others were near, invisible, but wonderfully manifest by their music.
Darkness gradually gathered in the valleys of the island, and twilight fell upon the hill. The glory died out of the west, the intensity of color away from islands and bays. Rain still fell, mistily, cool, sweet to the face. When I reached the foot of the slope larks were still singing somewhere.
All experience must be measured as much by what one brings, to it as by what it gives. Grassy windy hilltops, above the sea or the valley, always have enthralled me. They must surely have had strange relation to the lives of some of my ancestors. This experience on a hilltop of Urupukapuka, in the Bay of Islands, seemed fraught with unusual appreciation of nature and clearness of the meaning of life. My fishing was the merest of incidentals. It must be a means to an end, or one aspect of an end. How many times, on some adventure in a wild country, or some fishing jaunt to new waters, have I been rewarded by a singular revivifying joy, similar to this I found on the wet, grassy top of Urupukapuka, the rich amber light filling my eyes, and the songs of the larks in my ears!
Chapter VI
THE LURE OF THE GREAT STRIPED MARLIN
The government weather authorities of Auckland gave out the information that the gale we had been experiencing was owing to violent disturbances in the Antarctic. Personally, it was my first conviction that the upset of the sea occurred at Cape Brett, and right under my boat. I have attempted to fish some rough waters in my day, but this maelstrom around Piercy Rock had the distinction of being the worst. There was, however, one consolation--it beat the rough water of the Gulf Stream at Long Key, Florida, by a goodly margin. I had imagined the northeast trade-wind of the Gulf to be about the worst.
Captain Mitchell and I took the Radmores out, one in each boat; and needless to say we fervently prayed for the gale to lull or that the Radmores would react naturally and suggest we return to camp. But these English brothers had not only served in the British Royal Navy; they had traveled in ships all over the globe. The elder Radmore, who accompanied me, appeared to enjoy the spindrift flying off the waves into our faces and the pitching of the boat bow first, and the rocking counter motion from side to side like a cradle. There were seven other boats out, manned by anglers and boatmen apparently as crazy to fish as we were. Six hours of stinging wind, of scudding spray, of tossing seas, of dangerous ventures near the rocks trying to find calm water where there was none, of futile fishing and of most annoying and i
ncreasing discomfort, were added to my angling experience that February day. This was the eighth day of adverse winds and crisscross seas.
The following day we did not trust, for it dawned precisely like the one before, and a gentle breeze soon developed volume and power, and the low bank of gray cloud in the southwest soon overcast the sky. Yet at intervals the wind lulled and the sun shone warm. There were promises of better weather in a more or less remote future.
Hours in camp, however, were not wasted or idled. There were manifold tasks, including notes, tackle, photography, letters and exploring the many ramifications of the beautiful Urupukapuka Island. Though not a pretty comparison, to liken the island to the shape of an octopus was not too far-fetched. It had at least a dozen rambling arms, projecting out into the bay, as if to point toward the other islands. Some of them were a long way from camp, over grassy hills and down grassy canyons, and then out on waving undulating grassy ridges to promontories overlooking the sea.
There was one lonesome horse on the island, and I appeared always to encounter him on my walks. He regarded me with most evident surprise and concern; and he either was really wild or wanted me to think so. I observed, however, that as these meetings increased in number he grew less inclined to kick up his heels and go galloping off with flying tail and mane.
The locusts that sang their summer songs during the day were hard to locate in the titrees. At length, however, I got a glimpse of one, and he appeared black in color and rather small in size. Huge flies were present in considerable numbers, always buzzing and humming around when the wind lulled and the sun came out. They were not otherwise annoying.
We had a glimpse of quail in the reeds of the swale back of camp. I saw what I believed to be a swamp blackbird. In the dense grove of trees behind our tents there were sweet-voiced birds, so shy and illusive that I could not discover what they looked like. Then on a low, level slope I flushed a skylark out of the grass. It flitted and flapped over the grass as if it had broken wing, after the deceiving habit of a ruffed grouse when driven from her nest. This lark had answered to the same instinct, to lure the intruder away from her little ones. I soon found the tiny nest deep-seated in a tuft of grass, and surely safe from anything except the sharp hoof of a sheep. There were three young birds, not long hatched, with scarcely a feather. I slipped away to a knoll and watched for the mother bird to return; but evidently she saw me, for she did not come.
When we hauled a fish up on the beach, to weigh and photograph, there were always a number of large black-winged gulls that appeared so suddenly as to make me suspect they had been watching. They might have been attracted by scent. At any rate, they arrived and they were hungry. In the mornings, at daylight, I would hear them screaming on the beach, their notes at once piercing and musical. These gulls, by the way, were differently marked from any other I had observed.
Captain Mitchell related an adventure which I genuinely envied him. A giant albatross darted down behind his boat, while he was trolling a kahawai, and dived at the bait, tugged hard, then let go. Seen at close range the bird appeared enormous, austere and old, gray and white with black markings. He had a spread of wings that was incredible. The Captain let his bait drift back, in hopes that the albatross would take it and hook himself. What a catch that would have been! But the weird fowl of Ancient Mariner fame was not to be captured. Ponderously, yet with the grace of a swallow, he swooped down and circled once more over the bait, then sailed away with the flight so marvelous and beautiful to see.
Before sunrise the next morning I was up strolling along the beach, where I had been lured by the still soft dawn. No wind to speak of! It was a change vastly to my liking. At low tide the sandy crescent beach was fully a hundred yards wide and thickly strewn with shells. One of my myriad pastimes is gathering shells cast up by the sea.
This morning, however, my attention was distracted from my pleasant search by a crash in the water. I looked up in time to see one of the large white-and-black gannets fly right out of the water. The depth there could scarcely have exceeded a foot. Multitudes of little fish were leaping on all sides of the violent place from which the gannet had emerged. Most assuredly he had dived among them for his breakfast. I wondered how he could plunge down into that shallow water without killing himself on the sand.
Whereupon I watched him as he sailed away along shore, circling out around the boats, to turn back toward me. He was flying some forty or fifty feet above the water. About opposite my position mullet were breaking on the surface. No doubt that the gannet saw them! Suddenly he swooped down until he was scarcely two feet above the water. Then he bowed his wings and dived; quite the slickest dive imaginable! His white body gleamed under the water and must have covered a distance of six feet. Then he came up just as suddenly and in his cruel bill was a luckless little fish, which he swallowed kicking.
"I doff my hat to you, Mr. Gannet," I said admiringly, and indeed I suited action to words.
There is never an end to the marvelous things to be seen in nature. Always new, strange and wonderful things; not always beautiful! Self-preservation is the first law of nature, but it is a hard bloody business.
Too good to be true--the change in the weather! The breeze was soft, and clouds were few. We made skeptical remarks about how the wind would come up, gather strength and blow the tops off the waves; but it did not. All day the conditions improved. The gusts grew shorter of duration and farther apart. Warmer shone the sun. The sea gave evidence of calming down. It was enough for me to sit in my boat and be grateful for these welcome facts and smell the fragrant wood smoke that came from forest fires on the hills.
Twelve boats drifted around Piercy Rock that morning. We saw two Marlin fins the very first thing, before we had caught a bait. After we did catch one we could not locate the Marlin. During the morning two fish were hooked outside the rock, one of which, a small swordfish, I saw landed.
After lunch I had a strike. When hooked the fish ran three hundred yards as swiftly as an express train. Then plunging out, he turned straight back, with like speed. His dorsal fin cut the water for a hundred feet. Then I lost him. My line went slack. We thought he had broken off, with all the bag of line he was dragging. I wound in my line up to the double before I felt him right at the boat.
Then he began to leap, and by the time he had ended his beautiful and remarkable exhibition of pyrotechnics he had come into the air fifty times. He made every manner of leap except a somersault. The boatmen used up all the films on both my cameras. That tremendous burst of energy had exhausted the swordfish, which I soon landed.
Captain Mitchell had run out to sea, so far we could hardly sight his boat. When he came in his flag was flying. He yelled something unintelligible to me about fish, and he looked excited; but not until we arrived at camp did I get the gist of what had happened. He had lost a hammer-head, also a Marlin, had another strike, and then caught a swordfish that went down deep and never rose until he was beaten. Two of the strikes the Captain got by trolling in front of sighted fish. This method to me is a sure and fascinating one. With our luck and the change of weather we were once more happy fishermen. Captain Mitchell's fish weighed two hundred and ninety-eight pounds and mine two hundred and thirty.
The weather is always a paramount consideration with a fisherman, especially he who fishes on the sea. We had one fairly good day, compared with the last week or so, but that was not by any means calm. Still we were able to troll out to sea half a dozen miles. We raised a Marlin with the teasers, and he promptly took my bait. He gave a splendid exhibition of lofty tumbling and skittering around on his tail, wearing out his strength so that I subdued him in half an hour. He was the largest fish so far for me.
Later I had another swordfish smash at the left teaser, but he did not come back. Following that we espied a hammer-head fin. Remembering how the two hammer-heads had outwitted me, I tried this one. He bit readily; nevertheless I could not hook him. Finally he took half my bait and left. My conclusion was th
at this species of shark in New Zealand was very cunning.
Captain Mitchell lost a bait to a fish of some kind, and also fought a Marlin for a while, only to pull the hook. My Marlin, number nine for me, weighed an even three hundred pounds, giving me two pounds above Captain Mitchell's largest, a fact I made much of. "Well, Lucky Mitchell, I'm getting ahead of you," I averred complacently. "Better watch out, or I'll beat you as badly as you did me on the Rogue River in Oregon last fall... Never will forgive your catching seventy-nine steelhead to my twenty-five!"
That evening in camp was warm and pleasant and still. Ominous clouds in the west loomed up, however, and in the night a heavy storm broke. How the wind howled in the titrees and how the rain roared on my tent!
I remember with amusement an article sent me from some New Zealand newspaper. Two old gentlemen were discussing my visit and particularly the information that I was absorbing local color at Russell. One of them asked: "What you figure that air local color to mean, now?" His companion replied: "Aw, he's gettin' sunburnt. I know, because I've been at Russell."
Also I received a funny letter from a man who appeared somewhat annoyed at the tremendous importance apparently given me by the newspapers over my proposed swordfishing, and the amount of space given my tackle. In part he wrote: "See here, all this fuss about your coming seven thousand miles with high-priced new-fangled machinery to catch swordfish is sort of ridiculous. Sonny, I caught New Zealand swordfish before you were born, and did it with hairpins, too."