CORAL JUNGLES OF SEA-COW REEF 



the breathless mystery of deep water. Here, in 

 five to seven fathoms I would submerge until I 

 was blue and shaking, then come up cursing my 

 bodily limitations. 



It was the most Galapagos-like place I had seen. 

 But the walking was terrible, almost like clinker- 

 glass lava, over sharp, up-ended coral, which would 

 break off sufficiently to let one's bare legs slip down 

 and be gashed on the razor edges. Here and there 

 were small sand patches, deep hidden between stag- 

 horn branches, and the whitest of nubbin coral, 

 which, like beds of sweet alyssum or candytuft, 

 carpeted every vacant spot. Underneath was the 

 fallen debris of years, — rotting coral branches 

 broken off high overhead by mighty storms, over- 

 grown with lichen-algse, sponges and mock-moss. 

 On the animal hillsides blossomed great variegated 

 worm blooms, more delicate than any orchid, 

 while lesser flowers — mauve, pink and scarlet — 

 marked the trap-door worms, which far outdo the 

 spiders of the earth, for these doors are part and 

 parcel of the worms, and close automatically. 



I climbed six feet up a coral mountain and 

 crouched behind a chevaux-de-frise of fret-work 

 panels, hewn out of sheer ivory, and as I well 

 knew, not-to-be-touched, because of glass edges 

 and stinging cells. I now looked down and down 

 from the visible reef rim, down into the void of 

 the sea, — into that absolute blueness which leads 

 the eye on forever, yet conceals everything. It 

 was like night reversed, that sky darkness which 



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