BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



On several days great masses of sargassum weed 

 drifted into the bay, and we had more than once to 

 back out of solid fields and clear the propeller, — an 

 experience I have never had in the open Sargasso 

 Sea. This weed was filled with the usual tenants, 

 the absolutely bizarre sargassum fish, the weed- 

 colored pipefish, crabs and shrimps, tiny banded 

 Abudefdufs and the little trigger-fish, no whit 

 different from the Joey of our Noma and Arcturus 

 trips. Here too I found miniature triple-tails 

 (Lobotes) looking like nothing in the world. We 

 caught sight, now and then, of very small, brown, 

 wriggling worm-like fish, and after many attempts 

 caught one, and found it was a diminutive gar, — 

 short of beak, toothless, but active and fierce in 

 anticipation of its voracious life when its great rows 

 of needle teeth backed by five or six feet of solid 

 muscle would make it a most formidable adversary. 



The sight of the little gar cringing beneath a 

 sheltering strand of weed, recalled a recent activity 

 of one of its uncles or forefathers. Early one 

 morning near the schooner we saw a disturbance in 

 the water, and found it was made by about a 

 hundred little puffers, all massed closely together 

 and swimming steadily ahead. A flash of white, 

 astern, sent them on faster and impelled them all 

 to swell slightly. Then we saw the long, dark 

 form of a four-foot gar drawing nearer. The timid 

 puffers saw him too, inflated still more, and 

 bunched together, swimming so inconceivably 

 close that the school appeared like one large, round 



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