BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



land had evaporated with the water, and who were 

 following their ancestral element with all the speed 

 of their tiny muscled feet. One giant, a half inch 

 in length, ploughed the distance of his stature 

 in half a minute, and had therefore covered the 

 eight feet of his back trail in an hour and a half, 

 hardly the speed of the retreating tide. These 

 jet-black, handsome, beaded turrets, speeding over 

 the sand, were only a few of their kind — those 

 which had been caught in the blazing sun far from 

 shelter. Wherever a depression promised damp- 

 ness during low tide, or where the cool, mossy, 

 mangrove rootlets raised their spikes, thousands of 

 the ebony spires gathered, spun a moisture-proof 

 varnish across their front vestibule, and slept or 

 dreamed or thought, or, perhaps being merely 

 mollusks, only existed until the returning water 

 awoke them to the joys and sorrows of snail life. 



If I had ventured to make a probable list of the 

 sea creatures most likely to be found among the 

 mangrove roots at low tide I would have com- 

 pletely failed. I should have favored sturdy, 

 strong-housed snails and hermit crabs. But here 

 instead, were the flabbiest bits of life, — unpleasant, 

 wormy sea-cucumbers which, as seen half-dried 

 in the sun, not even an enthusiastic Holothurologist 

 could call attractive. Their claim upon our inter- 

 est, as I have shown elsewhere, is quite another 

 matter. 



Here in the sandy mangrove zone I was surprised 

 to find sea anemones. I came across a symmetrical 



54! 



