Название: The Cruise of the "Cachalot" Round the World After Sperm Whales
Автор: Frank Thomas Bullen
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4057664601896
isbn:
The calm still persisted, and, as usual, fish began to abound, especially flying-fish. At times, disturbed by some hungry bonito or dolphin, a shoal of them would rise—a great wave of silver—and skim through the air, rising and falling for perhaps a couple of hundred yards before they again took to the water; or a solitary one of larger size than usual would suddenly soar into the air, a heavy splash behind him showing by how few inches he had missed the jaws of his pursuer. Away he would go in a long, long curve, and, meeting the ship in his flight, would rise in the air, turn off at right angles to his former direction, and spin away again, the whir of his wing-fins distinctly visible as well as audible. At last he would incline to the water, but just as he was about to enter it there would be an eddy—the enemy was there waiting—and he would rise twenty, thirty feet, almost perpendicularly, and dart away fully a hundred yards on a fresh course before the drying of his wing membranes compelled him to drop. In the face of such a sight as this, which is of everyday occurrence in these latitudes, how trivial and misleading the statements made by the natural history books seem.
They tell their readers that the EXOCETUS VOLITANS "does not fly; does not flutter its wings; can only take a prolonged leap," and so on. The misfortune attendant upon such books seems, to an unlearned sailor like myself, to be that, although posing as authorities, most of the authors are content to take their facts not simply at second-hand, but even unto twenty-second-hand. So the old fables get repeated, and brought up to date, and it is nobody's business to take the trouble to correct them.
The weather continued calm and clear, and as the flying-fish were about in such immense numbers, I ventured to suggest to Goliath that we might have a try for some of them. I verily believe he thought I was mad. He stared at me for a minute, and then, with an indescribable intonation, said, "How de ol' Satan yew fink yew gwain ter get'm, hey? Ef yew spects ter fool dis chile wiv any dem lime-juice yarns, 'bout lanterns 'n boats at night-time, yew's 'way off." I guessed he meant the fable current among English sailors, that if you hoist a sail on a calm night in a boat where flying-fish abound, and hang a lantern in the middle of it, the fish will fly in shoals at the lantern, strike against the sail, and fall in heaps in the boat. It MAY be true, but I never spoke to anybody who has seen it done, nor is it the method practised in the only place in the world where flying-fishing is followed for a living. So I told Mr. Jones that if we had some circular nets of small mesh made and stretched on wooden hoops, I was sure we should be able to catch some. He caught at the idea, and mentioned it to the mate, who readily gave his permission to use a boat. A couple of "Guineamen" (a very large kind of flying-fish, having four wings) flew on board that night, as if purposely to provide us with the necessary bait.
Next morning, about four bells, the sea being like a mirror, unruffled by a breath of wind, we lowered and paddled off from the ship about a mile. When far enough away, we commenced operations by squeezing in the water some pieces of fish that had been kept for the purpose until they were rather high-flavoured. The exuding oil from this fish spread a thin film for some distance around the boat, through which, as through a sheet of glass, we could see a long way down. Minute specks of the bait sank slowly through the limpid blue, but for at least an hour there was no sign of life. I was beginning to fear that I should be called to account for misleading all hands, when, to my unbounded delight, an immense shoal of flying-fish came swimming round the boat, eagerly picking up the savoury morsels. We grasped our nets, and, leaning over the gunwale, placed them silently in the water, pressing them downward and in towards the boat at the same time. Our success was great and immediate. We lifted the wanderers by scores, while I whispered imploringly, "Be careful not to scare them; don't make a sound." All hands entered into the spirit of the thing with great eagerness. As for Mistah Jones, his delight was almost more than he could bear. Suddenly one of the men, in lifting his net, slipped on the smooth bottom of the boat, jolting one of the oars. There was a gleam of light below as the school turned—they had all disappeared instanter. We had been so busy that we had not noticed the dimensions of our catch; but now, to our great joy, we found that we had at least eight hundred fish nearly as large as herrings. We at once returned to the ship, having been absent only two hours, during which we had caught sufficient to provide all hands with three good meals. Not one of the crew had ever seen or heard of such fishing before, so my pride and pleasure may be imagined. A little learning may be a dangerous thing at times, but it certainly is often handy to have about you. The habit of taking notice and remembering has often been the means of saving many lives in suddenly-met situations of emergency, at sea perhaps more than anywhere else, and nothing can be more useful to a sailor than the practice of keeping his weather-eye open.
In Barbadoes there is established the only regular flying-fishery in the world, and in just the manner I have described, except that the boats are considerably larger, is the whole town supplied with delicious fish at so trifling a cost as to make it a staple food among all classes.
But I find that I am letting this chapter run to an unconscionable length, and it does not appear as if we were getting at the southward very fast either. Truth to tell, our progress was mighty slow; but we gradually crept across the belt of calms, and a week after our never-to-be-forgotten haul of flying-fish we got the first of the south-east trades, and went away СКАЧАТЬ