By G. BROWNE GOODE.

The gray old city of Siena, hidden away, almost forgotten amidst the hills of Tuscany, contains one object peculiarly interesting to Americans. Within its walls Christopher Columbus was educated, and hither returning in his days of prosperity, he deposited, doubtless with impressive ceremonies, a memento of his first voyage over the sea. His votive offering hangs within and over the main portal of the old collegiate church, for many years closed, and now rarely visited by tourists. Grouped together in a picturesque and very dusty trophy may be seen the helmet, armor and weapons of the great navigator, and with them the weapon of a warrior who was killed resisting the approach of the strange ships—the sword of an immense sword-fish. A sword-fish was no novelty to seafaring men accustomed to the waters of the Mediterranean, still the beak of this defender of the coast was preserved by the crew of Columbus, and for nearly four centuries has formed a prominent feature in the best preserved monument of the discoverer of America.

A similar though less impressive memorial hangs in the great hall of the Bremen Rathaus, side by side with the clumsy ship-models, the paintings of stranded whales, and the trophies of armor which illustrate the history of the old Hanse-town (Free City). It is a painting, of the size of life, of a sword-fish, taken by Bremen fishermen in the river Weser, with a legend inscribed beneath in letters of the most angular type:

This swift, mysterious animal seems at a period remote in antiquity to have literally thrust itself into the notice of mankind by means of its attacks upon the boats in the Mediterranean. Pliny knew it and wrote: “The sword-fish, called in Greek Xiphias, that is to say in Latin, Gladius, a sword, hath a beake or bill sharp-pointed, wherewith he will drive through the sides and planks of a ship, and bouge them so that they shall sink withall,” and the naturalists of the sixteenth century knew almost as much of its habits as those of the present day. Few fishes are so difficult to observe, and a student may, like the writer of this article, spend summer after summer in the attempt to study them with few results, other than the sight of a few dozen back-fins cutting through the water, a chance to measure and dissect a few specimens, and perhaps the experience of having the side of his boat pierced by one of their ugly swords. Yet, while little is known of their habits, few fishes are so generally known by their external characters.

No one who has seen a sword-fish or a good picture of one, soon forgets the great muscular body, like that of a mackerel, a thousand times magnified, the crescent shaped tail, measuring three feet or more from tip to tip, the scimitar-like fins on the back and breasts, the round, hard, protruding eyes, as large as small foot balls, and the sword-like snout, two, three or four feet in length, protruding, caricature like, from between its eyes. This feature has been recognized in almost every European language, and while many other fishes have names by the score, this has in reality but one. The “Sword-fish” of our own tongue, the “Zwaard Fis” of Holland, the Italian “Sifio” and “Pesce-Pada,” the Spaniard’s “Espada,” and the French “Espadin,” “Dend” and “Epee de Mer,” are variations upon a single theme, repetitions of the “Gladius” of ancient Italy, and “Xiphias,” the name by which Aristotle, the father of ZoÖlogy called the same fish twenty-three hundred years ago. The French “Empereur,” and the “Imperador” of the Spanish West Indies carry out the same.

A vessel cruising in search of sword-fish proceeds to the fishing grounds and sails hither and thither, wherever the abundance of small fish indicates that they ought to be found. Vessels which are met are hailed and asked whether sword-fish have been seen, and if tidings are thus obtained the ship’s course is at once laid for the locality where they were last noticed. A man is always stationed at the masthead, where, with the keen eye which practice has given him, he can readily descry the tell-tale dorsal fins at a distance of two or three miles.

The sword-fish has two cousins, the spear-fish and the sail-fish, which bear to it a close family resemblance. Their bodies, however, are lighter, their outlines more graceful, and their swords more round and slender. The latter has an immense sail-like back fin, which it throws out of the water while swimming near the surface. An English naval officer, Sir Stamford Raffles, wrote home from Singapore in 1822: “The only amusing discovery we have recently made is that of a sailing fish, called by the natives Ikan layer, of about ten or twelve feet long, which hoists a mainsail, and often sails in the manner of a native boat, and with considerable swiftness. I have sent a set of the sails home, as they are beautifully cut, and form a model for a fast sailing boat. When a school of these are under sail together they are frequently mistaken for a fleet of native boats.”

While there is but one species of sword-fish which occurs in the tropical and temperate parts of the Atlantic, in the Mediterranean, about New Zealand, and in the eastern Pacific from Cape Horn to California there are several kinds of sail-fishes, and at least eight species of spear-fish. The naturalists of the United States Fish Commission have recently discovered that we have along our Atlantic coast a fine species of sail-fish, and one or two of spear-fishes, in addition to the true sword-fish, which has been known to exist here since the days of the Spanish explorers.

It seems somewhat strange that no reference to the sword-fish is to be found in the narratives of the voyages of Columbus. The earliest allusion in American literature occurs in Josselyn’s “Account of two Voyages to New England,” printed in 1674, in the following passage:

“The twentieth day we saw a great number of sea-bats or owles, called also flying-fish; they are about the bigness of a whiting, with four tinsel wings, with which they fly as long as they are wet, when pursued by other fishes. In the afternoon we saw a great fish called the Vehuella, or Sword-fish, having a long, strong and sharp fin like a sword-blade on the top of his head, with which he pierced our ship, and broke it off with striving to get loose; one of our sailors dived and brought it aboard.”

Although sword-fish were sold in the New York fish market as early as 1817, it was not until 1839 that the writers in ichthyology consented to consider it an American fish.

The sword-fish comes into our waters in pursuit of food. At least this is the most probable explanation of their movements, since the duties of reproduction appear to be performed elsewhere. Like the horse-mackerel, the bonito, the blue-fish and the squeteagus, they pursue and prey upon the schools of menhaden and mackerel which are so abundant in the summer months. “When you see sword-fish, you may know that mackerel are about!” said one old fisherman to the writer. “Where you see the fin-back whale, following food,” said another, “there you find sword-fish.” They feed chiefly upon fish which swim crowded together in close schools, rising among them from beneath and striking to the right and left with their swords until they have killed a number, which they then proceed to devour. An old fisherman described to the writer a sword-fish in the act of feeding in a dense school of herring, rising perpendicularly out of the water until its sword, with a large portion of its body, was exposed, then falling flat over on its side, striking many fish as it fell, and leaving a bushel of dead ones floating at the surface.

They are most abundant in the region of Cape Cod, or between Montaulk Point and the eastern part of George’s Banks, and during July and August, though some make their appearance in the latter part of May, and a few linger until snow falls. They are seen at the surface only on quiet summer days, in the morning before ten or eleven, and in the afternoon after four o’clock. Old fishermen say that they rise when the mackerel rise, and follow them down when they go.

A sword-fish, when swimming near the surface, usually allows its dorsal fin and the upper lobe of its caudal fin to be visible, projecting out of the water several inches. It is this habit which enables the fishermen to detect the presence of the fish in the vicinity of their vessel. It moves slowly along, and the schooner, even with a light breeze, finds no difficulty in overtaking it. When excited its movements are very rapid and nervous. Sword-fish are sometimes seen to leap entirely out of the water. Early writers attributed this habit to the tormenting presence of parasites, but such a theory seems unnecessary. The pointed head, the fins of the back and abdomen snugly fitting into grooves, the long, lithe, muscular body, with contour sloping slowly from shoulders to tail, fit it for the most rapid and forcible movement through the water. Prof. Richard Owen, the celebrated English anatomist, testifying in court in regard to its power, said: “It strikes with the accumulated force of fifteen double-handed hammers. Its velocity is equal to that of a swivel shot, and is as dangerous in its effects as a heavy artillery projectile.”

Many very curious instances are recorded of their encounters with other fishes, or of their attacks upon ships. It is hard to surmise what may be the inducement to attack objects so much larger than themselves. Every one knows the couplet from Oppian:

It surely seems as if the fish sometimes become possessed with temporary insanity. It is not strange that when harpooned they retaliate upon their assailants. There are, however, numerous instances of entirely unprovoked assaults upon vessels at sea, both by the sword-fish, and still more frequently by the spear-fish (known to American sailors by the name of “boohoo,” apparently a corruption of “Guebucu,” a word apparently of Indian origin, applied to the same fish in Brazil). The writer’s note-book contains notes upon scores of such instances. The ship “Priscilla,” from Pernambuco to London had eighteen inches of sword thrust through her planking; the English ship “Queensbury,” in 1871, was penetrated to a depth of thirty inches, necessitating the discharge of the cargo; the “Dreadnought,” in 1864, when off Colombo, had a round hole, an inch in diameter, bored through the copper sheeting and planking; the schooner “Wyoming,” of Gloucester, in 1875, was attacked in the night time by a sword-fish, which pushed his snout two feet into her planking, and then escaped by breaking it off.

One of the traditions of the sea, time honored, believed by all mariners, handed down in varied phrases in a hundred books of ocean travel, relates to the terrific combats between the whale and the sword-fish, aided by the thrasher shark. The sword-fish was said to attack from below, goading his mighty adversary to the surface with his sharp beak, while the shark, at the top of the water, belabors him with strokes of his long lithe tail. Thus wrote a would-be naturalist from Bermuda in 1609: “The swoard-fish swimmes under the whale and pricketh him upward. The threasher keepeth above him, and with a mighty great thing like unto a flaile, hee so bangeth the whale that hee will roare as though it thundered, and doth give him such blows with his weapon that you would think it to be a crake of great shot.”

Skeptical modern science is not satisfied with this interpretation of any combat at sea seen at a distance. It recognizes the improbability of aggressive partnership between two animals so different as the sword-fish and a shark, and explains the turbulent encounters occasionally seen at sea by ascribing them to the attacks of the killer whale, Orca, upon larger species of the same order.

There can be little doubt that sword-fish sometimes attack whales just as they do ships. This habit is mentioned by Pliny, and furnishes a motive for all of Edmund Spenser’s “Visions of the World.”

Baron Sahartur, in a letter from Quebec in 1783, described a conflict between a whale and a sword-fish which took place within gun shot of his frigate. He remarks: “We were perfectly charmed when we saw the sword-fish jump out of the water in order to dart its spear into the body of the whale when obliged to take breath. This entertaining show lasted at least two hours, sometimes to the starboard and sometimes to the larboard of the ship. The sailors, among whom superstition prevails as much as among the Egyptians, took this for a presage of some mighty storm.”

There are two great sword-fisheries in the world, one on the coast of New England, and the other in the waters about Sicily. The former gives employment, in different years, to from twenty to forty vessels, and from sixty to one hundred and twenty men; the latter to over three hundred boats and seventeen hundred men. In Italy the annual product of the fishery amounts to about 320,000 pounds, while in New England, counting the fish taken incidentally by halibut and mackerel vessels, the yield is at least 1,000,000 pounds.

The apparatus used in killing sword-fish is very simple. It consists of the “pulpit” or “cresembo,” a frame for the support of the harpooneer as he stands upon the end of the bow-sprit, the “lily iron” or “Indian dart,” which is attached by a long line to a keg serving as a buoy, and is thrust into the fish by means of a pole about sixteen feet in length. As the vessel cruises over the schooling grounds a lookout is stationed at the masthead, whose keen eye descries the tell-tale dorsal fins at a distance of two or three miles. By voice and gesture he directs the course of the vessel until the skipper can see the fish from his station in the pulpit. There is no difficulty in approaching the fish with a large vessel, although they will not suffer a small boat to come near them. When the fish is from six to ten feet in front of the vessel, it is struck. The harpoon is never thrown, the pole being too long. The dart penetrates the back of the fish, close to the side of the high dorsal fin, and immediately detaches itself from the pole, which is withdrawn. The dart having been fastened, the line is allowed to run out as far as the fish will carry it, and is then passed into a small boat, which is towing at the stern. Two men jump into this and pull in upon the line until the fish is brought in alongside.

The pursuit of the sword-fish is much more exciting than ordinary fishing, for it resembles the pursuit of large animals upon land. There is no slow and careful baiting and patient waiting, and no disappointment caused by the capture of worthless “bait-stealers.” The game is seen and followed, outwitted by wary tactics, and killed by strength of arm and skill. The sword-fish sometimes proves a powerful antagonist, and sends his pursuers’ vessel into harbor, leaking and almost sinking from injuries which he has inflicted. I have known a vessel to be struck by wounded sword-fish as many as twenty times in one season. There is even the spice of personal danger to give savor to the chase. One of the crew of a Connecticut schooner was severely wounded by a beak thrust through the oak floor of the boat in which he was standing, and penetrating two inches into his naked heel. A strange fascination draws men to this pursuit when they have once learned its charm. An old sword-fisherman, with an experience of twenty years, told me that when he was on the fishing ground he fished all night in his dreams, and that many a time he had bruised his hands and rubbed the skin off his knuckles by striking them against the ceiling of his bunk when he raised his arms to thrust the harpoon into imaginary monster sword-fishes.

The home and its apartments should not be treated as a dead thing, where we make best arrangement of its fittings, and there leave it. It must grow in range and in expression with our necessities, and diverging, and developing tastes. The best of decorators can not put that last finish which must come from home hands. It is a great canvas always on the easel before us—growing in its power to interest every day and year—never getting its last touches—never quite ready to be taken down and parted with. No home should so far out-top the tastes of its inmates that they can not somewhere and somehow deck it with the record of their love and culture. It is an awful thing to live in a house where no new nail can be driven in the wall, and no tray of wild flowers, or of wood-mosses be set upon a window sill. The ways are endless, in short, in which a house can be endowed with that home atmosphere which shall be redolent of the tastes of its inmates.—Donald G. Mitchell.