Flying-fish do not play when they essay the air.
It is a life-and-death affair with them.
A thousand times a day we
could lift our eyes and see the tragedy played out. The swift,
broken circling of a guny might attract one's attention. A glance
beneath shows the back of a dolphin breaking the surface in a wild
rush. Just in front of its nose a shimmering palpitant streak of
silver shoots from the water into the air - a delicate, organic
mechanism of flight, endowed with sensation, power of direction, and
love of life. The guny swoops for it and misses, and the flying-
fish, gaining its altitude by rising, kite-like, against the wind,
turns in a half-circle and skims off to leeward, gliding on the
bosom of the wind. Beneath it, the wake of the dolphin shows in
churning foam. So he follows, gazing upward with large eyes at the
flashing breakfast that navigates an element other than his own. He
cannot rise to so lofty occasion, but he is a thorough-going
empiricist, and he knows, sooner or later, if not gobbled up by the
guny, that the flying-fish must return to the water. And then -
breakfast. We used to pity the poor winged fish. It was sad to see
such sordid and bloody slaughter. And then, in the night watches,
when a forlorn little flying-fish struck the mainsail and fell
gasping and splattering on the deck, we would rush for it just as
eagerly, just as greedily, just as voraciously, as the dolphins and
bonitas.
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