A rope is passed through his gills, and in triumph you return to the sailing-boat, there to tie him up. This all sounds very simple and straight forward, but there is no end to the tricks of which a tarpon is capable. He will dash backwards and forwards beneath the boat, till you think no power on earth can ever prevent your line becoming hopelessly entangled with yourself or the oars, he will double up and down, and round and round, he will even leap clean over the boat, often threatening to land himself inside it, and so swamp you. On one occasion a fish I had hooked started away up stream, then suddenly turned in his tracks, met the buoy of our anchor, took three clean turns round it, and continued his mad career towards the Gulf. I thought all was over, but Santi by some marvellous _tour-de-force_ somehow unwound it, shouting as he did so "Let your line out as hard as you can," and away we went. All this with a tide running about seven knots an hour, and the boat swinging wildly in mid-stream. We killed that fish, which greatly surprised us both. One hears wonderful stories of fishermen being towed many miles by tarpon, and one Englishman we met had been over four hours one day having a desperate fight with a very large fish, which I believe he lost in the end. After we had been at Fort Myers some time, we heard great accounts of the sport to be had at a place called Captiva, an island in the Gulf of Mexico. We were also told it was a very dangerous form of tarpon fishing there, as the place where you fish is a very narrow pass between two islands, where there is always a tremendous sea running, so that you are liable to be swamped. They also told us it would be quite impossible for a woman to attempt to land a tarpon there, as owing to the rapid tide you must land in order to play your fish, and this entails running up and down the beach after him, which is very hard work with a heavy fish. All this naturally made us much keener to go, so we made our preparations, which had to be considerable, as the only accommodation on the Island consisted of two or three fishermen's huts. We laid in a couple of small camp bedsteads, while sheets, pillows, blankets, and the ever necessary mosquito curtains were lent us by our host at the hotel. We also invested in a tin plate, mug, knife and fork each, a few cooking utensils, the largest tin bowls we could find to tub in, a large supply of tinned provisions, chickens, ice, in fact, all we could think of. Then we found a coloured cook, a vast and very cheery young man, who turned out an excellent _chef_. Finally we started, with our guides and tarpon boats--and towing our sailing-boat--on the steamer which plies every other day between Punta Gorda and Fort Myers, and which passes within a mile of Captiva Island.