Part 10

They soon gaffed him and deposited him on top of my tarpon. Then observing a huge sting ray, larger than the whip ray, I again called out: "Cap, gaff that big stingaree!"

"Not much," he answered.

"Yes," I continued, "I really want him; put him in my boat."

"You don't mean it. Why, he'll kill you."

"I'll risk it," I said; "haul him over in my boat."

"I'm afraid of him. His sting is six inches long!"

I prevailed on him finally, and after much careful management they hove it into my boat. "Look out for his sting!" cried Faulkner. "It's sure death!"

"'Fore God! Marse Doctor," said the negro, "I wouldn't stay in de boat wid dat debbil stingaree for a hundred acres in de promise' land!"

But I covered the sting, the dreaded weapon, with a piece of sailcloth and planted a foot on each side of it. The men then put their fare of marketable fish on the top of my specimens, which kept them in place, and then emptied the trap of the rest of the fish. Strange to say, the large shark, at least ten feet long, was completely smothered under the mass of fish and had to be gaffed and hauled overboard by main strength. It was now dark, with two miles to row in the teeth of a blue norther. We arrived at the hotel pier nearly frozen.

"Captain Faulkner," said I, "it's ten dollars in your inside pocket if you get my fish up to Hunter's Point by morning to meet the Tampa fish steamer."

The wind lulled somewhat at midnight, when they started in the sailboat; but it took them until daylight to beat up the fifteen miles to Hunter's Point, where my specimens were put on ice with the market fish and taken on the steamer Mistletoe to Tampa.

The next day but one I went to Faulkner's shanty, by previous appointment, for another trip to the pound net. I found the Captain sitting by his stove in a sorry plight. His head and face were swathed in bandages and badly swollen.

"Why, Captain!" I exclaimed, "what's the matter? I want to go out to the net this afternoon."

"Matter enough," he replied ruefully. "I've been nearly dead with neuralgia from going out to the net day before yesterday. Look at my face! I wouldn't go to-day for all the fish in Sarasota Bay. You must be made of whit-leather or whalebone!"

Next morning the storm subsided and I returned to Tampa. At the fish house of Mr. Savarese, I found my specimens in fine condition in an immense icebox. We at once began to pack them for shipment to Washington. As the tarpon lay on the floor Mr. Savarese asked, "What will he weigh?"

"Well," I replied, "you may guess his weight, but I have had a Græco-Roman wrestling match with him and I know his weight to a pound."

Mr. Savarese then measured him with a tape line.

"Six feet and three inches," he announced, "and he will weigh one hundred and fifty pounds."

"No," I rejoined, "not so much. He might weigh your figure in a few months with plenty of food and warmer water, but his present weight is one hundred and twenty-five pounds."

We put him on the scale, which he tipped at one hundred and twenty-four pounds.

The hundreds of thousands of visitors to the World's Fair who admired the graceful proportions of this tarpon, in the gelatin cast, painted in life colors, and hung in the Government building, little imagined the hardships and excitement attending its capture, or the subsequent swelled face of poor Captain Faulkner.

FLORIDA FISH AND FISHING

FLORIDA FISH AND FISHING

At the yuletide, or during the Christmas holidays, the lakes and streams of the North and West are locked fast in the icy chains of winter. The waters are then a sealed book to the angler, who, unless he indulges in the questionable sport of fishing through the ice, is consoled only by retrospective pleasures when overhauling his rods and flybooks. Not so, however, in the sunny waters of Florida, where fishing is, on the whole, at its best at the time of the Christmas festivities, if such a season can be realized by the Northern angler amid the profusion of fruits, flowers, and foliage.

To one accustomed to the merry jingle of sleigh bells and to coursing swiftly, steel shod, over the frozen pools he loves so well, it is really a marvelous, but pleasing, transition to be able to cast his bait or flies during the season of the yuletide.

Florida has one of the finest and most genial continental winter climates in the world. One can live in the open air the winter through, without discomfort, as it seldom rains during that season, and therein lies the great and lasting benefit to the invalid who requires an open-air life and nature's great restorers, fresh air, warm sunshine, moderate exercise and sound, refreshing sleep. He will be told that Florida has a damp climate by his physician who has never been in the state, and will be advised to go to a dry climate. But the dampness of Florida is not an exhalation from the soil, which is dry sand, but is the humid, salt air from the sea, which with the balsamic fragrance of the pines, conduces to the health and well-being of the invalid, and to the pleasure and enjoyment of the angler and sportsman.

I have suffered more from raw, chilly weather in the much-lauded winter climates of southern France, Italy, and even Morocco, than in southern Florida. And while the shooting along the Mediterranean in winter is very fair for the red-legged partridge, migratory quail and snipe, it is not to be compared with the shooting to be had in Florida, either for abundance or variety of game. In fact, Florida is hardly excelled by any state in the Union in its possibilities of fishing and shooting. And then these sports can be practiced at a time when the streams and lakes of the North are bound in icy fetters, and the woods and fields buried beneath the hibernal mantle of snow.

The angler can hardly go amiss in any section of Florida for his favorite sport. Wherever there is reasonably pure or uncontaminated water he will find some species of the finny tribe. And the true angler, he who loves the sport for its own sake, can be satisfied so long as his tackle is commensurate with his quarry. With his stout tools and tackle he enjoys the phenomenal leaps of the tarpon, or the leviathan struggles of the jewfish. With his delicate split-bamboo wand, silken line, gossamer leader and fairy flies, he enjoys equally well, perhaps more, the wary bream or crappie of the fresh waters. Better still, with suitable tackle the acknowledged game fish, par excellence, of America, the black bass, will yield him sport galore.