Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/355

Rh Although sword-fish are so plentiful in American waters, they are never seen of less than three feet in extreme length. Old fishermen who have taken and dressed them by the hundreds state that they have never found any traces of spawn in them. The absence of young fish and spawning females would indicate that they do not breed on our coast. In the Mediterranean the young are so plentiful as to be a common article of food. The appearance of the young fish when about an inch and a half long is shown in Fig. 3.

Menhaden, mackerel, bonitoes, blue-fish, and other species which swim in close schools, are the usual food of the sword-fish. A school of small fish has been seen crowded together near the surface, when their enemy appeared rising through the dense mass, and half out of water, and literally fell upon them with the sword and slew them in large numbers. Menhaden have been found floating which have been cut nearly in two by a blow of the sword. It is in pursuit of these fish that the sword-fish come to our Northern Atlantic shores in the summer months. The sword-fishery season opens in the neighborhood of Sandy Hook about the first of June; the fish are very abundant about Block Island and Nantucket in July and August, disappearing with the first cold weather in October. They are, like mackerel, at first very poor and lean, but as the season advances they grow fatter. For many years from three to six thousand have been taken annually on the New England coast, and there are no signs of any decrease or increase in their numbers. It is not unusual for twenty-five or more to be seen in the course of a single day's cruising, and sometimes as many as this are in sight from the mast-head at one time. One Gloucester schooner, the Midnight, Captain Alfred Wixon, took fourteen in one day, in 1877, on George's Banks.

The apparatus ordinarily employed for the capture of the swordfish is a harpoon with a detachable head. The pole is of hard wood, fifteen or sixteen feet in length, and from an inch and a half to two inches in diameter. To this is fastened an iron rod or shank, about two feet long and five eighths of an inch in diameter, and having a deep socket into which the pole sets. Upon the end of the shank fits somewhat securely the head of the harpoon, known to the fishermen by the names "sword-fish iron," "lily-iron," and "Indian dart." The lily-iron consists of a two-pointed piece of metal, having a socket running lengthwise on one side at the middle. In this is inserted the end of the harpoon-shank, and to it or near it is attached also the harpoon-line. When the iron has been plunged point first into the body of the fish, it is released by the withdrawal of the pole from the socket, and, by the pull of the line attached at its middle, is at once turned crosswise to the opening through which it entered, and is thus prevented from withdrawal.

The fish are always harpooned from the end of the bowsprit of a sailing-vessel. All vessels regularly engaged in this fishery are