244 FISHES

again, and that the same evening the ship sprang a
leak, which leak, the owners asserted, was caused by
a revengeful thrust from the angry fish! Against
this the scientific witnesses deposed that, though a
sword-fish frequently pierces a ship’s hull, he never
gets his blade out again. The roughness of the
underside of the jaw forbids its extraction. He has
to break it off and leave it behind him, to die, pro-
bably, in the attempt. An instance was cited in
which the fish completely perforated the vessel’s side
and poked his nose into the passenger’s berth. An
even more remarkable case is recorded of the driving
powers of the Xzphzas. H.M.S. Leopard was once
pierced by a fish through an inch of sheathing, three
inches of plank, and four-and-a-half inches of solid
timber, eight-and-a-half inches of the sword being
thus imbedded—-a record capped, Yankee-like, by
the Hon. Josiah Robbins, who relates that the ship
Fortune was struck by a sword-fish, which drove right
through the copper, through an inch of board
sheathing, three inches of hardwood plank, twelve
inches of white oak, two-and-a-half inches of hard
oak ceiling plank, and, lastly, through the head of an
oil-cask, where it remained immovably fixed, without
spilling the oil. An oldish inhabitant of this world
is Xiphzas gladius. His remains are found as low
down as the chalk. He is one of the largest of the
thorny fishes, and consequently of these mackerel
groups. He has not many near relatives, but one of
them is the singular fan-fish, or sailor-fish of Ceylon,
which hoists its fin like a leg-of-mutton mainsail, and
beats to windward on the surface of the sea.