Word: gladius
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...king of the jungle, Gladius, the gladiator, is surely king...
Cervantes could have written a novel about a swordfisherman. He knew the type. Dr. John Staige Davis, for example. A Manhattan internist, Dr. Davis, 66, has spent a considerable part of the past 37 years pursuing Xiphias gladius, the broadbill swordfish, from Montauk, N.Y., to Cape Hatteras, N.C., and from California to Peru. The quest has cost the good doctor something like 3,000 man-hours and many more thousands of dollars. And for what? In those 37 years, Dr. Davis has been privileged to see 100 swordfish. He has hooked eight...
...ocean-but not by much. The alltime record is 1,182 Ibs., caught by the late Lou Marron off Chile in 1953, and monsters easily twice as big have been seen. To that frightening bulk add fantastic speed (up to 60 m.p.h.), a long, terrible sword with which Gladius slays his prey, and a personality of regal, often violent, disdain for virtually anything and everything he encounters in the water...
...then the struggle begins, and an unfair battle it is-for the angler. Gladius in a towering rage can strip 1.000 yds. of 80-lb.-test line off an angler's reel in the space of seconds. Unlike his cousin the marlin, he rarely wastes effort on grandstanding jumps. He runs and rolls and thrashes about, often entangling himself in the protective wire leader on the end of the line-and snaps the 500-lb.-test wire like a piece of string. Or he may charge the boat-and if he does, the boat had better...
...anger the powerful Lorenzo, Savonarola replied grimly: "Though I am here a stranger and he the highest citizen, yet I shall remain and he shall depart." In 1492 Lorenzo was dead. Echoing in the ears of the impressed Florentines was the preacher's reiterated warning: "Ecce gladius Domini super terram, cito et velociter [Behold the sword of the Lord, swift and sure, over the earth...
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