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The Eye Of The Tiger by Wilbur Smith

“TIGER! TIGER! burning bright In the forests of the night … In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes?” William Blake

It was one of those seasons when the fish came late.

I worked my boat and crew hard, running far northwards each day, coming back into Grand Harbour long after dark each night, but it was November the 6th when we picked up the first of the big ones riding down on the wine purple swells of the Mozambique current.

By this time I was desperate for a fish. My charter was a party of one, an advertising wheel from New York named Chuck Mcgeorge, one of my regulars who made the annual six-thousand-mile pilgrimage to St. Mary’s island for the big marlin. He was a short wiry little man, bald as an ostrich egg and grey at the temples, with a wizened brown monkey face but the good hard legs that are necessary to take on the big fish.

When at last we saw the fish, he was riding high in the water, showing the full length of his fin, longer than a man’s arm and with the scimitar curve that distinguishes it from shark or porpoise.

Angelo spotted him at the instant that I did, and he hung out on the foredeck stay and yelled with excitement, his gipsy curls dangling on his dark cheeks and his teeth flashing in the brilliant tropical sunlight.

The fish crested and wallowed, the water opening about him so that he looked like a forest log, black and heavy and massive, his tail fin echoing the graceful curve of the dorsal, before he slid down into the next trough and the water closed over his broad glistening back.

I turned and glared down into the cockpit. Chubby was already helping Chuck into the big fighting chair, clinching the heavy harness and gloving him up, but he looked up and caught my eye.

Chubby scowled heavily and spat over the side, in complete contrast to the excitement that gripped the rest of us. Chubby is a huge man, as tall as I am but a lot heavier in the shoulder and gut.

He is also one of the most staunch and consistent pessimists in the business.

“Shy fish!” grunted Chubby, and spat again. I grinned at him.

“Don’t mind him, Chuck,” I called, “old Harry is going to set you into that fish. ” “I’ve got a thousand bucks that says you don’t,” Chuck shouted back, his face screwed up against the dazzle of the sun-flecked sea, but his eyes twinkling with excitement.

“You’re on!” I accepted a bet I couldn’t afford and turned my attention to the fish.

Chubby was right, of course. After me, he is the best billfish man in the entire world. The fish was big and shy and scary. Five times I had the baits to him, working him with all the skill and cunning I could muster. Each time he turned away and sounded as I brought Wave Dancer in on a converging course to cross his beak.

“Chubby, there is a fresh dolphin bait. in the ice box: haul in the teasers, and we’ll run him with a single bait,” I shouted despairingly.

I put the dolphin to him. I had rigged the bait myself and it swam with a fine natural action in the water. I recognized the instant in which the marlin accepted the bait. He seemed to hunch his great shoulders and I caught the flash of his belly, like a mirror below the surface, as he turned.