Explore "The Gladiator of the Sea" by Zane Grey on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Three summers in Catalina waters I had tried persistently to capture my first broadbill swordfish; and so great were the chances against me that I tried really without hope. It was fisherman's pride, I imagined, rather than hope that drove me. At least I had a remarkably keen appreciation of the defeats in store for any man who aspired to experience with that marvel of the sea -- _Xiphius gladius_, the broadbill swordsman.
On the first morning of my fourth summer, 1917, I was up at five. Fine, cool, fresh, soft dawn with a pale pink sunrise. Sea rippling with an easterly breeze. As the sun rose it grew bright and warm. We did not get started out on the water until eight o'clock. The east wind had whipped up a little chop that promised bad. But the wind gradually died down and the day became hot. Great thunderheads rose over the mainland, proclaiming heat on the desert. We saw scattered sheerwater ducks and a school of porpoises; also a number of splashes that I was sure were made by swordfish.