The Eye of the Tiger

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“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.

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