CORAL JUNGLES OF SEA-COW REEF 



chestnut burrs. With these were hosts of hermit 

 crabs, small worms, infant fish and octopi. 



Farther out, there came an abrupt drop to sev- 

 eral fathoms, the barrier wall being tall growths of 

 elkhorn coral, down which, with care, we could 

 clamber to the general reef floor. It did not do to 

 attempt this in any but a calm sea, for every help- 

 less toss against the stone-thorned branches re- 

 vealed the pitifully thin-skinned defence of our 

 bodies. 



It always seemed that in the places most diflicult 

 of access were to be found the greatest prizes. 

 The Isopora or branched corals, grew in a ghostly 

 tangle of cylindrical, white thickets fathoms down, 

 quite impenetrable. As they neared the surface 

 the branches flattened into the moose-antlered 

 type, and grew less closely together. I ventured, 

 more than once, to creep down into these tangles 

 of coral branches, testing each before I put my 

 weight on it, and striving to keep my hose free 

 from being jammed and perhaps torn in a crotch. 

 In the open reef, no matter what happened, one 

 could always lift off the helmet and swim up, but 

 here there was a cruel, interlaced, cobweb of 

 sharp-edged ivory overhead, and escape was pos- 

 sible only by slow deliberate choice of passage. 

 As I painfully made my way down nearer the level 

 of the ground corals, I encountered portieres of 

 the stinging millepores. When I reached these I 

 unslung the hammer at my back and pounded off 

 the outer layers, and there, like jewels in a geode, 



139 



