172 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



tical in color with the weed. The numbers and 

 size of the fish outside the weed were remarkable, 

 almost every species being represented by larger 

 individuals than elsewhere, due perhaps to the un- 

 usual abundance of food on these current-served 

 shores. My old friends Xesurus, the yellow-tailed 

 cows, were grazing in schools of two to three hun- 

 dred, shadowing slowly about the corners of boul- 

 ders. 



I was half way up a steep slope, and by twisting 

 the boat around with me I succeeded in reaching 

 the summit, where I could look down upon a 

 sinister valley, narrow and dark and deep, with the 

 opposite ridge covered with the same long, waving 

 weed. As I stretched full length upon a mat of the 

 sargassum, a gang — they were too ugly and danger- 

 ous looking to call school — of giant groupers parted 

 the fronds and drifted through toward me, all dark, 

 in tone with the olives and browns. They mouched 

 along, their ugly jaws chewing eternally on the cud 

 of life, when suddenly, without the slightest warn- 

 ing, there came a distinct glow and next to the last 

 grouper came one of the goldens. To their evident 

 opinion there was no difference; he impatiently 

 nudged a neighbor and in turn was pushed aside 

 by the fish following him. The most careful dis- 

 section on our part shows absolutely no physical 

 difference and yet, instead of being clad in mottled 

 olive green of the dullest, darkest shade, he is solid 

 gold from mouth to tail. The weed was appre- 

 ciably illumined when he passed through it. One 

 strange thing has been that, rare as these golden 



