CALLING CRABS. 87 



Plastered up to the middle like the rest of the party, 

 besides splashes over face and hat, I could get no dirtier than 

 I was already. I got without compunction into a canoe some 

 three feet wide ; and was shoved by three Negros down a 

 long winding ditch of mingled mud, water, and mangrove- 

 roots. To keep one's self and one's luggage from falling out 

 during the journey was no easy matter; at one moment, 

 indeed, it threatened to become impossible. For where 

 the mangroves opened on the sea, the creek itself turned 

 sharply northward along shore, leaving (as usual) a bed 

 of mud between it and the sea some quarter of a mile 

 broad ; across which we had to pass as a short-cut to the 

 boat, which lay far out. The difficulty was, of course, to 

 get the canoe out of the creek up the steep mud-bank. 

 To that end she was turned on her side, with me on 

 board. I could just manage, by jamming my luggage under 

 my knees, and myself against the two gunwales, to keep in, 

 holding on chiefly by my heels and the back of my neck. 

 But it befel, that in the very agony of the steepest slope, 

 when the N'egros (who worked like really good fellows) were 

 nigh waist-deep in mud, my eye fell, for the first time in my 

 life, on a party of Calling Crabs, who had been down to the 

 water to fish, and were now scuttling up to their burrows 

 among the mangrove-roots ; and at the sight of the pairs of 

 long-stalked eyes, standing upright like a pair of opera- 



