No Comebacks

'He'll have to turn and come up again,' said Kilian, watching from over Murgatroyd's shoulder. 'That will be the time to reel in.'

He stooped and peered at the brick-red, peeling face. Two tears squeezed out of the half-closed eyes and ran down Murgatroyd's sagging cheeks. The South African put a kindly hand on his shoulder.

'Look,' he said, 'you can't take any more. Why don't I sit in, just for an hour, eh? Then you can take over for the last part, when he's close and ready to give up.'

Murgatroyd watched the slowing line. He opened his mouth to speak. A split in his lip cracked wide and a trickle of blood ran onto his chin. The cork grip was becoming slick from the blood coming from his palms.

'My fish,' he croaked. 'My fish.'

Kilian stood up. 'All right, Engelsman, your fish,' he said.

It was two in the afternoon. The sun was using the afterdeck of the Avant as its private anvil. The Emperor stopped diving and the line-strain eased to 40 pounds. Murgatroyd began again to haul in.

An hour later the marlin leapt out of the sea for the last time. He was only a hundred yards away. His jump brought Kilian and the boat boy to the transom to watch. For two seconds he hung suspended above the foam, snap

ping his head from side to side like a terrier to shake the hook that drew him inexorably towards his enemies. From one corner of his mouth a loose strand of steel wire flickered in the sunlight as he shivered. Then with a boom of meat on water he hit the sea and vanished.

'That's him,' said Kilian in awe, 'that's the Emperor. He's twelve hundred pounds if he's an ounce, he's twenty feet from tip to tail and that marlin-spike bill can go through ten inches of timber when he's moving at his full forty knots. What an animal.'

He called back to Monsieur Patient. 'Vous avez vu?'

The old man nodded.

'Quepensez vous? Il va venir vite?’

'Deux heures encore,' said the old man. 'Mais il est fatigue.'

Kilian crouched beside Murgatroyd. 'The old man says he's tired now,' he said. 'But he'll still fight for maybe another couple of hours. Want to go on?'

Murgatroyd stared at where the fish had gone. His vision was blurring with tiredness and all his body was one searing ache. Shafts of sharper pain ran through his right shoulder where he had torn a muscle. He had never once had to call on his ultimate, last reserves of will, so he did not know. He nodded. The line was still, the rod arched. The Emperor was pulling, but not up to 100 pounds. The banker sat and held on.

For another ninety minutes they fought it out, the man from Ponder's End and the great marlin. Four times the fish lunged and took line, but his breaks were getting shorter as the strain of pulling 100 pounds against the clutch drag sapped even his primal strength. Four times Murgatroyd agonizingly pulled him back and gained a few yards each time. His exhaustion was moving close to delirium. Muscles in his calves and thighs flickered crazily like light bulbs just before they fuse. His vision blurred more frequently. By half past four he had been fighting for seven and a half hours and no one should ask even a very fit man to do that. It was only a question of time, and not long. One of them had to break.

At twenty to five the line went slack. It caught Murgatroyd by surprise. Then he began to reel in. The line came more easily. The weight was still there, but it was passive. The shuddering had stopped. Kilian heard the rhythmic tickety-tickety-tick of the turning reel and came from the shade to the transom. He peered aft.

'He's coming,' he shouted, 'the Emperor's coining in.'

The sea had calmed with the onset of evening.

The whitecaps were gone, replaced by a quiet and easy swell. Jean-Paul and Higgins, who was still queasy but no longer vomitting, came to watch. Monsieur Patient cut the engines and locked the wheel. Then he descended from his perch and joined them. In the silence the group watched the water astern.

Something broke the surface of the swell, something that rolled and swayed, but which moved towards the boat at the bidding of the nylon line. The crested fin jutted up for a moment, then rolled sideways. The long bill pointed upwards, then sank beneath the surface.

At 20 yards they could make out the great bulk of the Emperor. Unless there was some last violent force left in his bones and sinews he would not break for freedom any more. He had conceded. At 20 feet the end of the steel wire trace came up to the tip of the rod. Kilian drew on a tough leather glove and seized it. He pulled it in manually. They all ignored Murgatroyd, slumped in his chair.

He let go of the rod for the first time in eight hours and it fell forward to the transom. Slowly and painfully he unbuckled his harness and the webbing fell away. He took the weight on his feet and tried to stand. His calves and thighs were too weak and he slumped in the scuppers beside the dead dorado. The other four were peering over the edge at what bobbed below the stern. As Kilian pulled slowly on the wire trace that passed through his glove, Jean-Paul leaped to stand on the transom, a great gaff hook held high above his head. Murgatroyd looked up to see the boy poised there, the spike and curved hook held high.

His voice came out more a raucous croak than a shout.

‘No.’

The boy froze and looked down. Murgatroyd was on his hands and knees looking down at the tackle box. On top lay a pair of wire cutters. He took them in the finger and thumb of his left hand and pressed them into the mashed meat of his right palm. Slowly the fingers closed over the handles. With his free hand he hauled himself upright and leaned across the stern.

The Emperor was lying just beneath him, exhausted almost to the point of death. The huge body lay athwart the boat's wake, on its side, mouth half open. Hanging from one corner was the steel trace of an earlier struggle with the game-fishermen, still bright in its newness. In the lower mandible another hook, long rusted, jutted out. From Kilian's hand the steel wire ran to the third hook, his own, which was deep in the gristle of the upper hp. Only part of the shank was showing.

Succeeding waves washed over the marlin's blue-black body. From 2 feet away the fish stared back at Murgatroyd with one marbled saucer eye. It was alive but had no strength left to fight. The line from its mouth to Kilian's hand was taut. Murgatroyd leaned slowly down, reaching out his right hand to the fish's mouth.

'You can pat him later, man,' said Kilian, 'let's get him home.'