90 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



them. The number of the surgeons which I took 

 was Hmited only by my desire for specimens or the 

 capacity of our aquariums, for my capture of one 

 conveyed no alarm or sense of insecurity, and when 

 I again climbed down the ladder the chances were 

 that I would find the remainder of the school in the 

 same spot, undisturbed. 



The best sport was to be had with the brilliantly 

 colored wrasse. They were among the most active 

 and swift, slender and supple as eels, with an abun- 

 dance of fins for doing everything that perfect con- 

 trol demands. Two species in particular were 

 always about, although never more than a half 

 dozen were in sight at once. Nature must have 

 relegated the coloring of some of these fish 

 to an amateur assistant, for it was crude, blatant, 

 and, judged by human ideas of ornamentation, in 

 execrably bad taste. Yet as I saw it — a living 

 organism — winding in and out of dark crevices, or 

 twisting almost on its back to get a nibble at crab 

 meat, it seemed rather an exquisite mass of palette 

 splashes. The head was scarlet, the body, fins and 

 tail mostly bright grass green. The head was out- 

 lined in dark blue, and from the lips, which were 

 solidly of the same color, five blue lines streamed 

 backward, flowing in irregular bands through the 

 eye and across the cheeks, saturating the pectoral 

 fins. The whole green body was thickly banded 

 with irregular vertical lines of an unnamable dull 

 maroon — like thick heavy streaks of some awful 

 rain or acid stains. The tail had a stiff, unnatural 

 pattern, like a great scarlet H drawn crudely over 



