"Smith, Wilbur - The Eye of the Tiger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

spasmodically. The glazed single eye was as big as a ripe apple, and the
long body pulsed and shone with a thousand flowing shades of silver and
gold and royal purple.

"Cleanly now, Chubby," I shouted, as I got a gloved hand on the steel
trace and drew the fish gently towards where Chubby waited with the
stainless-steel hook at the gaff held ready.

Chubby withered me with a glance that told me clearly that he had been
pulling the steel into billfish when I was still a gutter kid in a
London slum.

"Wait for the roll," I cautioned him again, just to plague him a little,
and Chubby's lip curled at the unsolicited advice.

The swell rolled the fish up to us, opening the wide chest that glowed
silver between the spread wings of the pectoral fins.

"Now!" I said, and Chubby sank the steel in deep. In a burst of bright
crimson heart blood, the fish went into its death frenzy, beating the
surface to flashing white and drenching us all under fifty gallons of
thrown sea water.

I hung the fish on Admiralty Wharf from the derrick of the crane.

Benjamin, the harbour-master, signed a certificate for a total weight of
eight hundred and seventeen pounds. Although the vivid fluorescent
colours had faded in death to flat sooty black, yet it was impressive
for its sheer bulk - fourteen feet six inches from the point of its bill
to the tip of its flaring swallow tail.

"Mister Harry done hung a Moses on Admiralty," the word was carried
through the streets by running bare-footed urchins, and the islanders
joyously snatched at the excuse to cease work and crowd the wharf in
fiesta array.

The word travelled as far as old Government House on the bluff, and the
presidential Land-Rover came buzzing down the twisting road with the gay
little flag fluttering on the bonnet. It butted its way through the
crowd and deposited the great man on the wharf. Before independence,
Godfrey Biddle had been St. Mary's only solicitor, island, born and
London-trained.

"Mister Harry, what a magnificent specimen," he cried delightedly.

A fish like this would give impetus to St. Mary's budding tourist trade,
and he came to clasp my hand. As State Presidents go in this part of the
world, he was top of the class.

"Thank you, Mr. President, sir." Even with the black homburg on his