THE CEILING OF THE BAY 



fish. The gar leaped at them and disturbed the 

 mass, causing every outside puffer to bore inwards 

 with all its little might. Immediately the gar 

 turned and sounded swiftly without having caught 

 a victim. The puffers went on, so pressed together 

 that it seemed as if the fins of the outside layer 

 must furnish all the propelling power. Like the 

 hollow square of a herd of musk oxen with horns all 

 pointed outward, the puffers presented to their foe 

 a solid, chevaux-de-frise of prickly spine, — a mass 

 far too large to be swallowed whole. 



Suddenly a single puffer separated itself and 

 streaked away at right angles. When it had gone 

 twenty feet I saw the gar after it, and a moment 

 later the great jaws opened, snapped shut, and 

 drew the unfortunate puffer down. To the human 

 palate this titbit might be compared very precisely 

 to a full grown chestnut burr. 



No magician ever produced more from an empty 

 hat than a single sweep of the net would often 

 reveal under the barest bit of sargassum weed. 

 From one scanty frond came a trio of small squids. 

 They had made themselves of exactly the weed 

 shade, and even after being lifted from the water 

 they still clung pathetically to the hue which up to 

 this moment had protected them from every foe. 

 Then suddenly, in mid-air, all realized that they 

 were a color behind their environment, and, as one 

 squid, all promptly switched to white, the color of 

 the net. I dumped them unceremoniously into a 

 quart mason jar, and like triplet Tweedledees, all 



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