THE CEILING OF THE BAY 



— now two, now one fish. Between cannibals 

 and astonishingly voracious jellyfish I had trouble 

 preserving any of my small captures. 



On this same Easter Sunday as we neared the 

 beacon marking Sand Cay, the narrow streak 

 of turquoise of the reef gradually opened out into a 

 great oval. We slowed down the engine the better 

 to watch for the first faint slopes, deep, deep down, 

 tangled with mighty corals and gorgonias, with 

 sharks and huge groupers seeping slowly in and out 

 of the shadowy gorges. The reef rapidly shoaled 

 and in twelve or fifteen feet of water I anchored 

 and prepared to dive. From directly ahead, a 

 brown pelican flapped slowly along, wheeled sud- 

 denly and went into a nose dive. He struck the 

 water with a crash, his great pouch swelling out to 

 unbelievable proportions, then righted himself, 

 and went through a series of swallowing motions, 

 something like a person saying Ahhhh at the doc- 

 tor's. On the instant of his strike, a wave arose 

 from the calm surface — a living wave of thousands 

 upon thousands of droplets of fishes, which sprang 

 in an agony of fear from some great pursuing fish 

 into the maws of our quintet of pelicans. For an 

 hour or two this continued, sometimes five living 

 waves being in sight at once, vibrating between 

 the great yellow-tails and the birds. 



When I submerged, the Easter theme, presaged 

 by the jellyfish, held true, and trillions of the small 

 fish drove past and back, swerved and milled until 

 my eyes ached watching them. This watching 



27 



