The final day of the tournament, the Crimson fishermen had the ignominious distinction of failing to hook a single fish. "It's just unheard of not to catch a fish all day," Zewinski says. Actually, the team was not completely shut out, since Zewinski caught a 6-in. sea robin and hauled in a large clam shell from the ocean bottom. The squad also spotted a female whale but decided not to give chase.

Thanks in part to Harvard's disappointing finish the U.S. was edged out for the Nova Scotia International Trophy, as the Canadian colleges caught 3,599 lbs. of fish altogether, 27 lbs. more than the Americans.

This is one sports competition, however, in which winning is of wholly secondary importance. The real appeal of competing on the Harvard fishing team is evoked by that closing stanza of John Masefield's poem:

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.