blue depths. The marlin had killed and now it circled again. It might lose interest, or become alarmed by the unnatural movement of the carcass. It was essential that no movement or drift on the line scared it off.
The seconds dripped like treacle, slow and sticky.
'He is making another circle,' Shasa tried to encourage himself. Still nothing happened.
'Il est parti,' the skipper announced lugubriously. '11 a refusd.' 'I'll kick your pessimistic butt if you wish it on me,' Shasa told him furiously. 'He hasn't bloody well partied. He's coming around for another circle.' The line twitched in his fingers, and Shasa let out a shout of relief.
'Le voilk! There he is!' Elsa clapped her hands. 'Eat, fish. Smell that lovely sweet flesh. Eat it,' she implored.
The line jiggled and tugged softly, and Shasa let a few inches slide through his fingers. He could imagine the marlin picking up the carcass in its horny beak and turning it head-first to swallow it down.
'Don't let him feel the hook,' Shasa whispered a prayer. The loop of line should allow the point of the hook to lie flat against the bonito's head as it slid down the marlin's gaping maw. If, however, the loop had twisted or hung up - Shasa did not want to think about that.
There was another long pause, and then the line came taut again and began to move off with sedate but purposeful momentum.
'He's swallowed it,' Shasa exulted, and let the line flow through his fingers; coil after coil unwound from the deck and slipped away over the transom.
Shasa leapt to the swivel chair and swung himself into the seat. He clipped the harness to the rings on top of the glittering Fin-Nor reel. The harness formed a hammocklike sling around his lower back and buttocks and was attached directly to the reel.
Only the ignorant, or the deliberately misinformed, believed that the angler was buckled into the chair like a fighter pilot and that this gave him some sort of unsporting advantage. The only thing that kept him in the chair was his own strength and balance. If he made a mistake, the fish, weighing over a thousand pounds, as fast and powerful as a marine diesel engine, could pluck him and the rod effortlessly over the side and give him a very swift trip down to the five-hundred-fathom mark.
As Shasa settled behind the rod and engaged the brake, the line came up short against the spool and the rod-tip bowed over, as though it was kow-towing to the fish's brute strength.
Shasa thrust his feet against the foot board and took the strain with his legs.
'AJlez!' he yelled at Martin the skipper. 'Go!' The diesel bellowed as Martin opened the throttle wide and a dense cloud of oily black diesel smoke belched from 44e the exhausts. Le Bonheur leapt forward and crashed her shoulder into the swell.
No man had the strength to drive the point of the huge Mustad hook into the iron-hard mouth of the marlin. Shasa was using the power and speed of the boat to set the hook, to bury the barb deep in the horny beak. The spool of the reel hummed against its own massive brake-pads, and the line streamed away in a white blur.
'Arr8tez-vous!' Shasa judged that the hook was in. 'Stop!' he cried, and Martin closed the throttle.
They stopped and hung in the water. The rod was arched over as though the line were attached to the bottom of the ocean, but the reel was still ' held by the brake.
Then the fish shook his head, and the power of it crashed the butt of the rod back and forth in its gimbal as though it were a twig in a high wind.
'Here he goesp Shasa howled. The fish had been taken aback by the unexpected drag of the line, but even Le Bonheur had been unable to move his massive body against the drag of the water.
Now at last he realized that something was seriously wrong, and he made his first mad run. Once again the line poured off the reel in a molten blur, and Shasa was lifted high off the seat like a jockey pushing for the post.
So great was the friction in the massive Fin-Nor reel that it began to smoke. The grease on the bearings melted and boiled. It bubbled and spurted from the casing in steaming jets.
Leaning back with the full weight of his body, Shasa kept both hands well clear of the humming reel. The Dacron line was as dangerous as the blade of a butcher's bandsaw. It would take off a finger effortlessly or slash skin and flesh and muscle to the bone.
The fish ran as though there was no restraint upon him. The line on the spool melted away, three hundred yards were gone, then four, and in seconds half a kilometer of line had gone over the side.
'He's a goddam. Chinaman and he's going home to daddy,' Shasa yelled. 'He's never going to stop!'
Abruptly the ocean parted in a maelstrom of white water, and the fish came out. Such was his girth and mass that he gave the illusion of moving in slow motion. He rose into the air, and the water poured from his body as though from the hull of a surfacing submarine. He came all the way out and, though he was five hundred yards from Le Bonheur, he seemed to blot out half the sky.
'Qu'il est grand!' shrieked Martin. Je n'ai jamais vu un autre comme qap And Shasa knew it was true - he had never seen a fish to match this one, not by half. He seemed to light the heavens with a reflected blue radiance, a flash of distant lightning.
Then, like a steeplechaser taking a fence, the fish reached the zenith of its leap and curved back to the surface of the ocean. It opened in a shockwave to his bulk, and then he was gone, leaving them all shaken by the memory of his majesty.
The line was blurring from the reel. Though Shasa had the brake dangerously heavy, pushing the drag up near the 12o-pound breaking-strain, it still streamed away as though there were no check upon it.
'Tournez-vous! Turn!' There was an edge of panic in Shasa's voice, as he yelled at the skipper; 'Turn and chase him!' With full rudder and opposite engine-thrust Martin spun the boat on its heel and they roared away in pursuit of the fish. Le Bonheur was rushing into wind and current, and the swells battered her. She dug her nose into them and burst them open in white spray. Then as she leapt over the crests she was almost airborne, and came pounding down into the troughs on her belly.
In the chair Shasa was thrown around mercilessly. He hung on to the arms of the chair, and rode the swells with his legs, his backside not touching the seat. The rod was bent like a longbow at full stretch. Even though Le Bonheur was running at full throttle, he was still losing line. The marlin was outrunning them by ten knots. The line on the reel wasted away, and Shasa watched helplessly as the spool seemed to shrink.
'Shasap Elsa shrieked from the bridge. 'He has turned!' She was so excited that she spoke in Italian. Shasa had by now enough practice with the language to understand her warning.
'Stop! Arr8tezp he howled at the skipper.
For no apparent reason the marlin had suddenly turned completely about and was charging back towards the boat.
This was not yet apparent from the direction that the line was running into the water. The marlin had thrown a half-mile loop in the line, which was potentially catastrophic. The side-drag of the loop in the water could snap the heavy line like cotton when the marlin came up tight on it. Elsa had spotted the turn in the very nick of time.
Shasa had to pick up that loop before the marlin passed under the boat. He pumped with his legs in a powerful mechanical rhythm, coming up to gain a foot of line, sinking down to give himself slack to take it on to the reel with two quick turns of the handle. Up and down he bobbed, grunting for air with each cycle, legs and arms working together, and the wet line coming on to the spool under such tension that a fine haze of droplets sprayed from the braid. The line was cutting sideways through the water, slicing a tiny feather from the surface. The loop was shrinking. The fish passed under the boat. The line began to straighten.
Shasa pumped with a frantic rhythm, getting those last few turns of line on to the reel.
'Turn now!' he gasped. Sweat was pouring down his naked chest. It mingled with the lipstick design that Elsa had drawn and ran down to stain the waistband of his shorts. 'Turn quickly! Quickly!' The fish was tearing away in the opposite direction, and the skipper got Le Bonheur around just as the line came up tight again. The full weight of the fish came down on the rod-tip, and it whipped over like a willow tree struck by a gale of wind. Shasa was levered up out of the chair to the full stretch of his legs, and the strain on the line was ounces short of snapping it.
He thumbed off the brake, releasing the tension, and the line crackled off the spool at fifty miles an hour. With despair he watched as those precious feet of line which he had won back with so much effort blurred effortlessly over the side.
'Chase him!' he blurted, and Le Bonheur pounded after the fish.
It was exquisite teamwork now. No single man could subdue a fish like this alone and unaided. The handling of the boat was critical, each turn and run and back-up had to be quick and precise.
Precious seconds before it was apparent to the men on the deck below, Elsa called out to warn of each new wild evolution of the great fish. For an hour those irresistible rushes never ceased. Every second of that time the thin strand of Dacron was under immense pressure, and Shasa stood in the chair and used his weight against it, pumping the rod and churning the reel. He took turn after agonizing turn on to the spool and then watched it dissipate again as the fish made another
