We spent our last day in the Devonian trying to collect enough specimens to make up for the tons of lost payload. I chopped down a large tree, which helped. After that, I went fishing. Since we had no boat, I fished from the amphibious tractor. Carlos and Thatcher came with me.

I caught four fish in an hour, all fairly small. “I think something spooked the fish,” I said. “When we were here before, I did better than this in half as much time.”
“I can guess what spooked them,” Thatcher said. “Look!”
On the beach a few hundred meters away, a fish had washed up on shore. Carlos steered the tractor to shore to see what it was. It was a big placoderm, almost ten feet long, and it was not in good shape. Something had bitten off most of a fin and tried to crush its head. “Looks like our friend is back,” I said.
“Should we go back to base camp?” Thatcher asked.
“No,” Carlos said coldly. “We should troll the bay until we catch that dunk. It’s a matter of honor. Captain Bill could still be in that thing’s belly. There may not be much left of him, but we have to try to bring back whatever we can for a decent burial.” I could tell from the look in his eye that he was more concerned with avenging our captain than retrieving his body. I didn’t object; I felt the same way.

We discussed how to go about catching the Dunkleosteus. “We ought to use the power winch on the tractor,” Carlos said. “Maybe use a big fish for live bait.”
“No, you can’t cast with the winch,” I said. “It’s best if I reel it in with my rod and reel. Then we can sink a boat hook into it and hold onto it with the winch.”
“Holding onto it won’t be the problem,” Thatcher said. “The problem will be killing it before it can smash our craft to pieces. It must be at least twice the size of the amphibian.”
“The most important thing will be using the right bait,” I said. “We know the fish is attracted to shiny objects. I have an idea for something that could work even better than a real fish…”

Over the next fifteen minutes, I hastily assembled a new lure. I fashioned it from strips of silver fabric that I cut out from an insulated blanket. I attached them all to a small light, which would make the cloth shine even brighter. The final product was about two feet long. I proudly held up my creation and twirled it. The silver strands shone brilliantly in the sunlight. “No Dunkleosteus can resist it,” I said.

“I just hope you have better luck with fish than you do with women,” Thatcher said. I shot him a venomous glance.
“Are you sure you can take the dunk with that rod?” Carlos asked.
“No problem. People have caught great whites with this rod,” I said, a little defensively. “The estimated maximum load is three and a half tons.”
“That fish out there probably weighs more than that,” Thatcher said. “It’s as long as a prize great white, and its armor would make it hundreds of pounds heavier than a shark of the same size. One good tug could snap your rod like a twig.”
“It will hold up,” I said confidently. “Just remember, I’ll be counting on you to take it out as soon as I get it within range.” Doubt entered my mind when I remembered my own failure to kill the fish before. “Actually, I have more doubts about the boing stick than I do about the rod and reel. Do you think the grenade blast could get through all that armor?”
“It won’t matter, because I won’t be aiming for the head,” Carlos told me. “No offense, but that was one thing you did completely wrong when you fought it before. The boing stick is designed to be fired into the belly. The idea is for the shaped charge to cause massive damage to internal organs. Ideally, a shark will have its stomach blown out its mouth.”

On that optimistic note, we went back out to sea. After another hour of fishing, I hooked something BIG.
“Holy s*!” Carlos exclaimed. “That thing is gonna snap!”
“Don’t worry, it’s made of aircraft-grade graphite fibers,” I said. “Flexible, but incredibly strong.” The rod was bent into an “F” shape. As I slowly reeled the fish in, the rod bent ever closer to an inverted “U” shape.

Words can’t describe the grueling battle I had with that fish. I would reel in a few feet of line, only to be forced to let almost as many feet back out when the fish tried to pull free. I was slowly wearing the fish down, but I was being worn down too. My hands blistered, and the ache in my muscles grew exponentially worse. Every few minutes, we would hear an eerie hum over the noise of the engine. That was the Dunkleosteus’ scream, reverberating through our hull. Disconcertingly, the screams did not grow fainter or less frequent as the duel dragged on.

After three hours of fighting, I had the fish within shooting range. When it showed its metallic face, Carlos fired a grenade at it. There was a gout of blood, and I could tell that the fish had grown weaker when I resumed reeling the line in. However, there was still plenty of fight left in the fish. Soon, it was thrashing about at the surface, raising its body halfway out of the water. Carlos fired another grenade, but missed. “Steer for the shallows!” Carlos called to Thatcher. “We don’t want to give this thing room to dive!” He then tried softening it up some more with the Super Uzi.

Thatcher did as instructed. I continued to reel the fish in. Just when it seemed that victory was assured, catastrophe struck. Without warning, my reel exploded. Fishing line flew all over the deck. It then immediately began to move like a herd of earthworms as the fish rushed for freedom. I grabbed the loose spool off the deck and tried to pull it in by hand, but it was obviously a hopeless fight. All I got in return for my efforts was a nasty cut when the line slashed through my glove.

“I’ve got a better idea!” Carlos shouted. Dropping his weapons, he grabbed a fistful of line and knotted it around a fixture on the boat deck. “Haul ass, Thatcher!”
Thatcher brought the Amphibian to full power. To my amazement, Carlos’s hastily made knot held against the fish’s best efforts. “Don’t act so surprised,” Carlos said when he noticed me staring at the knot. “I wouldn’t have lasted long in the Indonesian occupation force if I hadn’t been able to tie people up securely.”

The fish fought back so hard that it made the craft rear back like a horse. It might have broken loose, if our tracks hadn’t finally touched bottom. The added traction allowed Thatcher to overpower the fish. Soon, we had the fish thrashing around behind us in waters barely five feet deep. As we neared dry land, Carlos pushed the boing stick into my hands. “Go finish the job,” he told me.

Filled with bravado, I climbed out of the Amphibian and waded toward my harnessed foe. The water was up to my shoulders. I held the boing stick just above the waves and carefully aimed at the fish’s body, just behind the pectoral fins. The fish raised its head out of the water and screeched. In the air, the noise was like nails on a blackboard. The fish slowly turned to face me, obviously preparing for a vengeful last charge. Still, I held my fire, savoring the moment. Finally, I spoke: “Smile, you spawn of a fish!” Then I fired. There was a spray of blood and flesh. The fish let out one last groan as it rolled over on its side. Then it was still, except for a feeble post mortem twitching of its tail.
Carlos waded up beside me. “Sheesh. Bad puns are supposed to be my department,” he said. I paid no attention. Something was happening to the slain fish. I waded nearer.
“Sweet Mother!” Carlos exclaimed. I shot him a dirty look. “Hey, no pun intended,” he said. We both stepped nearer. There was genuine awe in Carlos’s voice as he continued: “Maybe this was why it—she—was so aggressive. She was eating for…” His voice trailed off as he tried to count the slender, translucent young that were streaming out of the fish’s body. Each was about six inches long. By my count, there were at least seven of them. There’s no telling how close the mother had been to term, but her offspring were obviously quite capable of surviving on their own. We watched in silence as they swam swiftly away.

“It’s a shame you didn’t catch any of the young,” Smith told us after we hauled the Dunkleosteus back to camp. “However, this will vastly improve our knowledge of arthrodire biology. We should take a picture of the three of you with the fish, for posterity.

Carlos, Thatcher and I posed in front of the giant placoderm. At my insistence, Dianna stood with us. It took some persuading, for the dunk smelled even worse than ordinary dead fish. “Without your help, I wouldn’t have survived our first encounter with it,” I reminded her. Carlos and I put on our biggest smiles for the camera. Carlos held the boing stick, while I held my “trusty” rod. The damage to the rod was irreparable, but
I keep it on my wall as a trophy. The fish itself was shipped to the Smithsonian in an oversized cargo container full of formaldehyde. Careful measurements showed that it was 29 feet, 8.73 inches long and weighed 10,568.95 pounds. I have been officially credited with the largest fish ever caught with a harpoon, though they put an asterisk next to my name in the record books.

“Maybe they should have just created a new category: ‘fish caught with rod, reel, submachine gun, grenade launcher and tractor’,” Carlos mused.
The remains of Captain Bill MacGregor were found “mostly intact” in the fish’s stomach. He was buried in a cemetery in Maryland, as per his wishes. (It was obviously not an open casket service.) I still sometimes regret that we did not bring back Dr. Horne, but my guilt was assuaged when I learned that his will called for him to be cremated and his ashes scattered. I like to think he would have been satisfied to be buried in the prehistoric world he spent his life studying.

Hours before we returned to the present, I had a talk with Dianna. “I still haven’t made up my mind,” she told me. “To be frank, I think I need to get to know you a little better before I can make a decision. Please don’t ask me about it again; when I make my decision, I will tell you. Until then, be patient, and know that I do care about you.”
You might say it took a lot of time—360 million years, and 6 weeks.