But it is the dolphin that is the king of deep-sea fishes.Never is his colour twice quite the same.Swimming in the sea, an ethereal creature of palest azure, he displays in that one guise a miracle of colour.But it is nothing compared with the displays of which he is capable.At one time he will appear green--pale green, deep green, phosphorescent green; at another time blue--deep blue, electric blue, all the spectrum of blue.Catch him on a hook, and he turns to gold, yellow gold, all gold.Haul him on deck, and he excels the spectrum, passing through inconceivable shades of blues, greens, and yellows, and then, suddenly, turning a ghostly white, in the midst of which are bright blue spots, and you suddenly discover that he is speckled like a trout.Then back from white he goes, through all the range of colours, finally turning to a mother-of-pearl.
For those who are devoted to fishing, I can recommend no finer sport than catching dolphin.Of course, it must be done on a thin line with reel and pole.A No.7, O'Shaughnessy tarpon hook is just the thing, baited with an entire flying-fish.Like the bonita, the dolphin's fare consists of flying-fish, and he strikes like lightning at the bait.The first warning is when the reel screeches and you see the line smoking out at right angles to the boat.
Before you have time to entertain anxiety concerning the length of your line, the fish rises into the air in a succession of leaps.
Since he is quite certain to be four feet long or over, the sport of landing so gamey a fish can be realized.When hooked, he invariably turns golden.The idea of the series of leaps is to rid himself of the hook, and the man who has made the strike must be of iron or decadent if his heart does not beat with an extra flutter when he beholds such gorgeous fish, glittering in golden mail and shaking itself like a stallion in each mid-air leap.'Ware slack! If you don't, on one of those leaps the hook will be flung out and twenty feet away.No slack, and away he will go on another run, culminating in another series of leaps.About this time one begins to worry over the line, and to wish that he had had nine hundred feet on the reel originally instead of six hundred.With careful playing the line can be saved, and after an hour of keen excitement the fish can be brought to gaff.One such dolphin I landed on the Snark measured four feet and seven inches.
Hermann caught dolphins more prosaically.A hand-line and a chunk of shark-meat were all he needed.His hand-line was very thick, but on more than one occasion it parted and lost the fish.One day a dolphin got away with a lure of Hermann's manufacture, to which were lashed four O'Shaughnessy hooks.Within an hour the same dolphin was landed with the rod, and on dissecting him the four hooks were recovered.The dolphins, which remained with us over a month, deserted us north of the line, and not one was seen during the remainder of the traverse.
So the days passed.There was so much to be done that time never dragged.Had there been little to do, time could not have dragged with such wonderful seascapes and cloudscapes--dawns that were like burning imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the zenith; sunsets that bathed the purple sea in rivers of rose-coloured light, flowing from a sun whose diverging, heaven-climbing rays were of the purest blue.Overside, in the heat of the day, the sea was an azure satiny fabric, in the depths of which the sunshine focussed in funnels of light.Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a procession of milky-turquoise ghosts--the foam flung down by the hull of the Snark each time she floundered against a sea.At night the wake was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa slime resented our passing bulk, while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets, with long, undulating, nebulous tails--caused by the passage of the bonitas through the resentful medusa slime.And now and again, from out of the darkness on either hand, just under the surface, larger phosphorescent organisms flashed up like electric lights, marking collisions with the careless bonitas skurrying ahead to the good hunting just beyond our bowsprit.
We made our easting, worked down through the doldrums, and caught a fresh breeze out of south-by-west.Hauled up by the wind, on such a slant, we would fetch past the Marquesas far away to the westward.
But the next day, on Tuesday, November 26, in the thick of a heavy squall, the wind shifted suddenly to the southeast.It was the trade at last.There were no more squalls, naught but fine weather, a fair wind, and a whirling log, with sheets slacked off and with spinnaker and mainsail swaying and bellying on either side.The trade backed more and more, until it blew out of the northeast, while we steered a steady course to the southwest.Ten days of this, and on the morning of December 6, at five o'clock, we sighted land "just where it ought to have been," dead ahead.We passed to leeward of Ua-huka, skirted the southern edge of Nuka-hiva, and that night, in driving squalls and inky darkness, fought our way in to an anchorage in the narrow bay of Taiohae.The anchor rumbled down to the blatting of wild goats on the cliffs, and the air we breathed was heavy with the perfume of flowers.The traverse was accomplished.Sixty days from land to land, across a lonely sea above whose horizons never rise the straining sails of ships.