03/02/2026
"By midnight my mood had turned so ugly that I decided—for some genuinely perverse reason—to go out and fish for marlin once again.
All you need to know about my attitude at that point is that I didn't pack that god-damn brutal Samoan war club in my sea-bag for the purpose of crushing ice. (You remember the war club, Ralph—the one I bought in Honolulu to pulverize aloe plants to treat your back wound.) There is a fearful amount of leverage in that bu**er, and I knew in my heart that by the end of the day I would find a reason to use it—on something.
Maybe on those drunken macho bastards at Huggo's. They don't dare even lie to one another about boating a 300-pound marlin in less than 45 minutes. Then it usually takes them another 15 minutes to kill it. My time was 16 minutes and 55 seconds on the line and another five seconds to whack it stone-dead with the club.The beast fought savagely. It was in the air about half the time I was fighting it.
The first leap came about ten seconds after I clipped myself into the chair, a wild burst of white spray and bright-green flesh about 300 yards behind the boat, and the second one almost je**ed my arms off.
Those bu**ers are strong, and they have an evil sense of timing that can break a man's spirit. Just about the time your arms go numb, they will rest for two or three seconds—and then, in that same split second when your muscles begin to relax, they will take off in some other direction like something shot out of a missile launcher.
Yeah ... that poor doomed bastard was looking me straight in the eye when I reached far out over the side and bashed his brains loose with the Samoan war club. He died right at the peak of his last leap: One minute he was bright green and thrashing around in the air with that god-damn spear on his nose, trying to kill everything within reach....
And then I smacked him. I had no choice. A terrible blood lust came on me when I saw him right beside the boat, so close that he almost leaped right into it, and when the captain started screaming, "Get the bat! Get the bat! He's gone wild!" I sprang out of the goddamn fighting chair and, instead of grabbing that silly aluminum baseball bat they normally use to finish off these beasts with ten or 15 whacks, I laughed wildly and said, "F**k the bat, I brought my own tool."
That's when I reached into my kit bag and brought out the war club and, with a terrible shriek, I hit that bastard with a running shot that dropped him back into the water like a stone and caused about 60 seconds of absolute silence in the cockpit.
They weren't ready for it. The last time anybody killed a big marlin in Hawaii with a short-handled Samoan war club was about 300 years ago.
It was very fast and savage work, Ralph. You'd have been proud of me. I didn't f**k around."
~Hunter Thompson
The Curse of Lono
Art "The Hook-Up" by Ralph Steadman
