BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



lost their temper at once, and played their last 

 card — shooting out an impenetrable smoke screen 

 of sepia. Heartlessly I emptied and replaced the 

 water, and after the third time their little fountain 

 pens ran dry, and after a few futile skeins of palest 

 diluted grey, they gave up and waited for whatever 

 fate the god of squids might be pleased to mete out. 

 If they were terrified it did not affect their appetite 

 and each seized a tiny fish with eagerness, one of 

 them putting a second under his arm, or one of his 

 eight arms. They shot about and played at 

 spectrum, shifting from greyish white to opaque 

 brownish black, in this latter phase glittering with 

 solid iridescence in the sun. Between times, they 

 dressed up in pink or yellow or carmine, or, with 

 one accord, draped three broad bands about their 

 bodies. 



While the squids were doing their stuff, an 

 unexpected performance was suddenly staged in 

 the jar of sargassum fish. There had been three, 

 sized like the three bears, and after half an hour 

 we found that an inverted magician's trick had 

 been performed — to my astonishment, where there 

 were three, was now but one — ^a Pterophryne very 

 fat, and gulping uneasily. The awful truth gradu- 

 ally dawned upon us, but we never settled whether 

 it was a case of the Japanese boxes — each within 

 the other, or whether the big cannibal had in turn 

 engulfed his spiny and much tentacled brethren. 

 The same thing happened later, on the schooner 

 in an aquarium, in the interval of focusing a camera 



26 



