Leslie Charteris: The Saint on the Spanish Main

It must perhaps be explained to those who have not yet been initiated into this form of angling that a member of the swordfish family does not attack a lure like a bass hitting a plug or a trout rising to a fly. It first strikes its intended victim with its bill, to kill or stun it: this is the blow that jerks the line from the outrigger, and with the line released the bait is for a few seconds no longer towed by the boat and drops back with convincing lifelessness, while the fish that struck it circles into position to take a comfortable gulp at the prospective snack. The precise timing of this wait is a matter of fine judgment curbing the excitement of a suspense that makes seconds seem to stretch out into minutes.

“Now!” howled O’Kevin, and even as he said it the Saint had flipped the drag on his reel, and was lifting his rod tip up and back. “And again!” yelled the captain, dancing a little jig, but already the Saint was rearing back again, so that the slender rod tip bowed in a sharp curve, tightening the line strongly yet with a controlled smoothness that would not snap it. “Again! That’s right! That should’ve hooked the spalpeen—”

A hundred and fifty yards astern the fish shot up out of the water, shaking its head furiously, the whole magnificent streamlined length of it seeming to walk upright on its thrashing tail. The sunlight flashed on its silver belly, shone on the sleek midnight blue of its back, stenciled the outline of the enormous spread sail of dorsal fin from which the fish took its name. Then after what seemed like an incredible period of levitation it fell back into the sea with a mighty splash. The reel under Simon’s hand whined in protest as the line tore off it.

“Holy Mother of God,” said O’Kevin reverently. “That’s the biggest grandfather av a sailfish these owld eyes iver hope to be gladdened be the sight av. If it weighs one pound it’ll weigh a hundred an’ twenty. No, it’s bigger’n that. It’s twenty pounds bigger. It’s a world’s record!.. Des! Is it dreamin’ ye are?” As if waking out of a trance himself, he scrambled back to the wheel, pushed his mate aside, hauled back on the clutches, and gunned the engines, his gnarled hands moving with the lightning accuracy of a concert pianist’s. “Howld on, Simon me boy,” he breathed. “Play him as gently as if ye had him tied to a cobweb, an’ me an’ the Colleen will do the rest!”

If this story were about nothing but fishing, the chronicler could happily devote several pages to a blow-by-blow account of the Saint’s tussle with that specimen of Istiophorus americanus , but they would be of interest mainly to fishermen. Those who have had a taste of light-tackle fishing for big-game fish know that when you have more than a hundred pounds of finny dynamite on the end of a line which is only guaranteed to support eighteen pounds of dead weight, you do not just crank the reel until you wind up your catch alongside the boat. All you can do is to apply firm and delicate pressure, keeping the line tight enough so that he cannot throw off the hook, yet not so taut that it would snap at a sudden movement. If he decides to take off for other latitudes, you cannot stop him, you can only keep this limited strain on him and wait for him to tire. But you also have only a limited length of line on your reel for him to run with, and if he takes all of it you have lost him, so the boat must follow him quickly on every run so that he never gets too far away. In this manoeuvring the boat captain’s skill is almost as vital as the fisherman’s.

Patsy O’Kevin was obviously an expert captain, but on that occasion his eagerness turned his skill into a liability. He was so anxious not to let a probable record get away, so afraid of letting the Saint put too much strain on his frail line, that he followed the fish as closely as a seasoned stock horse herding a calf — so quickly and closely that the Saint had a job to keep any pressure on the fish at all. And so there were several more jumps, and many more runs, and time went on until it seemed to have lost meaning, and then at last there was a moment when the fish turned in its tracks and came towards the boat like a torpedo, the Saint reeling in frantically, and O’Kevin for once was slow, and fumbled over throwing the clutches from reverse to forward. The bellying line passed right under the transom, right through the churning of the propellers, and as the Saint mechanically went on winding a limp frayed end of nylon lifted clear of the wake.

No more than a boat’s length off the starboard beam, the freed sailfish rose monstrously from the water for one last derisive pirouette.

“I did it,” said O’Kevin brokenly. “There’s no one to blame but me. If ye’d be kinder to me than I deserve, Simon, would ye just be cuttin’ me throat before ye throw me overboard to the sharks?”

“Forget it,” said the Saint, wiping the sweat from his face. “I was getting tired of the whole thing anyway.”

He was amazed to see by his watch that the battle had lasted more than two and a half hours.

“An’ almost all the time, that son av a whale was headin’ almost due south,” O’Kevin said. “We’re further from Bimini now than we were whin we left Miami.”

Only the taciturn mate had no comment. O’Kevin turned the helm back to him, and a certain restrained melancholy settled over the whole party as the Colleen swung around and ploughed northwards again with the stream.

After a belated lunch of sandwiches and beer had had their restorative effect, however, Patsy finally stopped shaking his head and muttering to himself and stomped aft to the bait box.

“If ye’ll allow me to bend another bait to yer line, sorr,” he said, “we may yet meet the great-grandfather o’ that tadpole I lost for ye.”

If this were really a fishing story, it would tell how the Saint presently hooked and fought and vanquished an even bigger sailfish, a leviathan that was likely to remain a world’s record for all time. Unfortunately the drab requirements of veracity to which your historian is subject will not permit him this pleasure.

In fact, most of the northward troll yielded only one medium-sized barracuda. Then, with the islands of Bimini already clearly in sight, Simon hooked another sailfish, but it was quite a small one, only about fifty pounds, as they saw on its first jump. O’Kevin allowed Des to handle the boat, which he did efficiently enough, and in something less than an hour the exhausted fish was wallowing tamely alongside. O’Kevin reached down and grasped its bill with a gloved hand and lifted it half out of the water, his other hand sliding down the wire leader. He looked at Simon inquiringly.

“Let it go,” said the Saint. “We’ll come back and catch him some day when he’s grown up.”

So this only shows exactly how and why it was that it was late afternoon when the Colleen threaded her way between the tricky reefs and shoals that guard the harbor entrance of Bimini, half a day later than she should normally have arrived, and flying from one of her raised outriggers the pennant with which a sport fisherman proclaims that a sailfish has been brought to the boat and voluntarily released.

The Commissioner was waiting to come aboard as they tied up. Acting as immigration, health, and customs officer combined, he glanced at their papers, accepted a drink and a cigarette, wished them a pleasant stay, and stepped back on the dock in less than fifteen minutes.

Simon had stayed behind in the cabin to pick up his suitcase. As he brought it out to the cockpit, O’Kevin was already on the pier talking to three people who stood there. Simon handed up his two-suiter, and as he swung himself up after it O’Kevin said, “This is the gintleman I was talkin’ about. Mr Templar — Mr and Mrs Uckrose.”