Their flights became shorter and shorter, and their course more fluttering and uncertain, while the enormous leaps of the dolphin appeared to grow only more vigorous at each bound.

Eventually, indeed, we could see, or fancied we could see, that this skilful sea sportsman arranged all his springs with such an assurance of success, that he contrived to fall, at the end of each, just under the very spot on which the exhausted flying-fish were about to drop! Sometimes this catastrophe took place at too great a distance for us to see from the deck exactly what happened; but on our mounting high into the rigging, we may be said to have been in at the death; for then we could discover that the unfortunate little creatures, one after another, either popped right into the dolphin's jaws as they lighted on the water, or were snapped up instantly afterwards.
It was impossible not to take an active part with our pretty little friends of the weaker side, and accordingly we very speedily had our revenge.

The middies and the sailors, delighted with the chance, rigged out a dozen or twenty lines from the jib-boom end, and spritsail yard-arms, with hooks baited merely with bits of tin, the glitter of which resembles so much that of the body and wings of the flying-fish, that many a proud dolphin, making sure of a delicious morsel, leaped in rapture at the deceitful prize.
It may be well to mention that the dolphin of sailors is not the fish so called by the ancient poets.

Ours, which I learn from the Encyclopaedia, is the _Coryphoena hippurus_ of naturalists, is totally different from their _Delphinus phocoena_, termed by us the porpoise, respecting which there exists a popular belief amongst seamen that the wind may be expected from the quarter to which a shoal of porpoises are observed to steer.

So far, however, from our respecting the speculations of these submarine philosophers, every art is used to drag them out of their native element, and to pass them through the fire to the insatiable Molochs of the lower decks and cockpits of his Majesty's ships, a race amongst whom the constant supply of the best provisions appears to produce only an increase of appetite.
One harpoon, at least, is always kept in readiness for action in the fore part of the ship.