The reel continued to sing, and the line going into the water was a white hissing streak. I began to pray to Aztec gods for the big fish to get tired of that straight line. Pedro was back at the wheel. He jammed it into reverse and backed along the line of flight of the fish. The powersong diminished in pitch a few notes, but still the monster drove on, trying to run from the pain in his jaw. He made a leap a full fifteen hundred feet from the boat. He was so far away that he looked like a minnow. Pedro stopped backing instantly to keep from piling up slack.
Jimmy began to pull on the fish. It was going at right angles to the boat. Pedro kept the boat in a small turn to keep the fish centered over the stern. With both hands on the rod, Jimmy pulled slowly, pulling the rod from a horizontal to a vertical position. Then, as he lowered it quickly, he reeled in a few feet of the precious line. It was heartbreakingly slow compared to the speed at which it had gone out. Fifty times he strained to pull up on the rod, gaining a few feet each time, and then the fish, undiminished in power, took it all away from him again.
We were covering a lot of ground. Every time the fish took off, Pedro would keep after it, conserving that precious line. Once the spool showed as the fish stopped his run and jumped.
I glanced at my wristwatch. Forty minutes so far. The sweat poured off Jimmy Gerran, and his shirt looked as though he had been doused with a bucket of water. I kept encouraging him in low tones. I knew what the fight was taking out of him. Heave up and reel in, heave up and reel in. Minute after minute.
Then the fish came like an express train, right for the boat, its miniature sail cutting the water. The line came fast then. It passed the boat within fifty feet and went on out in the opposite direction. I was afraid of what would happen when it hit the end of the temporary slack. Jimmy was smart enough to stop reeling and wait, rod level. The spool jumped from complete stillness into whining speed as the line went out. But this time the fish turned and tail-walked some three hundred yards from the boat.
Once again the laborious process began. When I saw the blood on Jimmy’s wrist I knew what the blisters were doing to his hands. His face was set and death-pale, and there was more blood on his lower lip.
Wolta sat in the other chair and said in a wheedling voice, “Kid, you’re bushed. You’re not tough enough for that baby. Next time you get a chance, slip the rod over here. Old Lew’ll bring him in for you.”
The kid didn’t answer, but he didn’t seem to be working so hard on the fish. I know the feeling. I’ve been hooked into fish who have almost convinced me that it is impossible to bring them in.
Yet he worked on, his arms trembling each time he pulled. I looked at my watch. An hour and fifteen minutes of heartbreaking, muscle-ripping, back-bending labor.
“Come on, Jimmy. Hand it over,” Wolta said. I wanted to tell him to shut his face. But it was the kid’s problem, not mine.
Jimmy began to rest for little intervals when he could have been regaining line. But the big marlin wasn’t as eager as he had been. He was fighting doggedly, but without that first, wild, reckless speed.
Wolta said, “Tell you what. I’ll slip into your chair and you slip out. Take the rod butt out of the gimmick just long enough to slip your leg under.”
Jimmy made no objection. I moved back. Wolta came over and began to fumble with the buckle on one of the straps. Jimmy sat without trying to regain line.
The fish was about a hundred and seventy yards out. Suddenly his first fury seemed to come back to him and the fish shot out of the water at an angle, covering what seemed to be twenty yards in a straight line, leaning up out of the water at an angle, dancing on his tail, lashing the sea to foam with his enormous tail.
I saw Jimmy’s hands tight on the rod, saw the dried blood on his wrist. “Lay off, Wolta,” he said thickly, hardly speaking above a whisper.
Wolta laughed his great gusty laugh and continued to work on the buckle. Jimmy told him to lay off again. Wolta paid no attention, and only said, “I can bring that big baby in.”
The fish was taking out line slowly. Jimmy took his right hand off the rod butt, swung it in a short hard arc. His fist hit Wolta in the mouth. Wolta took two stumbling steps back and sat down hard. Jimmy didn’t even look around. He began to fight back a few feet of line at a time. Wolta got up with a roar deep in his throat. For once that mechanical smile was gone from his bruised lips. He started toward Jimmy, big fists clenched.
The sailor, a hundred-and-twenty-pound Mexican with dark soft eyes, suddenly appeared between Jimmy and Wolta. He looked mildly at Wolta, and his hand was on the haft of his belt knife. Wolta stopped as though he had run into a wall.
He gave me a mechanical smile and said, “Okay, okay. Let the kid lose the fish.”
Jimmy labored on. He looked as though he would keel over from exhaustion, sag unconscious in the harness. But somewhere he found the strength to match the wild courage of the fish.
One hundred and fifty yards. One hundred and twenty. One hundred. And he had been on the fish for over two hours. When the fish was within seventy feet of the boat, it spun and went on out again, but not more than a hundred yards. I heard Jimmy’s harsh sob as he began once more to bring it in. The marlin sounded, going down two hundred feet, lying there like a stone. Jimmy brought it up, foot by foot. The blue came up the last thirty feet at enormous speed and shot high into the air, seeming to hang over the boat for an instant, living beauty against the deep blue of the sky. When it hit the water, the spray shot up against us.
It came in slowly from twenty yards, lolling in the water, rolling to show its belly, all fight suddenly gone.
Two hours and forty-three minutes. Pedro gaffed it and it was killed and the sailor with a line around him went down into the sea and got a line on the fish, got a firm loop around the waist of the tail.
Wolta had to be asked to get on the line with us. Jimmy sagged limply in the harness, his eyes half closed, his hands hanging limp. A heavy drop of blood fell from the palm of his hand to the deck. We got the monster over the side. It was the biggest blue I had ever seen. Not record of course. Record is 737 pounds, Bimini, 1919.
Wolta made no sound of praise. Phlegmatic Pedro forgot himself so far as to pound Jimmy on his tired back with a brown fist, saying, “Muy hombre! Muy hombre!”
Literally translated it means, “Very man.” But the sense is, “You are one hell of a man!”
We unstrapped Jimmy, and I actually had to help him in to the bunk. He gave me a weak, tired grin. We headed in.
Wolta said, “How about letting me fish on the way in.”
Pedro said, “Too late, meester.”
Wolta said, “Lot of fishing I got today. Just about one damn hour.”
“You got yourself a big sail,” I said.
The blue dwarfed our two sail. Wolta snorted and went and got a beer out of the ice locker.
Boating the blue should have been the high point of the day. Or even that punch in the mouth. But it wasn’t.
The high point came after we were on the pier. We were the last boat in. Dusk was coming. A man waits near the pier by the big scaffolding where they hang up the fish. He takes pictures, good pictures, for a moderate fee.
The crowd was beginning to drift away. They came back in a hurry when the big blue was hauled up onto the pier. They came back and gasped and gabbled and asked questions.
Wolta answered the questions. Wolta stuck out his chest. Though he didn’t have the nerve to say so, he answered the questions in such a way that the crowd was led to believe that it was his fish.
The line was thrown over the scaffolding and it took four men to haul the blue clear of the ground. Pedro brought the rods up, leaned them against the side of the scaffolding. The blue was in the middle with the two sails on either side.