HAITIAN CONTRASTS AND BEGINNINGS 



sight of the white bellies of floatmg fish. Some 

 were dead, many were only stunned and we reaped 

 a harvest. Almost all were large and of widely 

 differing species ; great rosy red snappers — the best 

 of pan-fish, many -colored angelfish, groupers, trig- 

 ger-fish with their poisonous triggers set at full 

 cock as futile protection against this unthinkable 

 danger, trunkfish whose shelter within their 

 armored box was of no avail. 



There were porcupme fish who at the shock had 

 valiantly inflated themselves behind their chevaux- 

 de-frise of spines and so died, and there were 

 mackerel — masters of the bay — whose sharp teeth 

 and wonderful speed aided them not at all against 

 this holocaust of vibration. And finally, here 

 and there, like variegated water-lilies, floated 

 butterfly -fish in gay pigments and patterns, with 

 the colored eye-spots at the far end of their bodies 

 appearing more alert and perceptive than their 

 real vacant orbs. I thought of the hundreds of 

 fish which must have sunk to the bottom, and the 

 unending lines of influence which spread and spread 

 — the news somehow going abroad of the wonder- 

 ful manna at hand. For days and weeks to come, 

 strange, beautiful, ugly and weird beings would 

 continue to swim or crawl or creep toward the dead 

 things which had given up their lives to make a 

 bombman's holiday. 



19 



