ment of a finger what I then considered as a spec- 

 tacle such as only the best of fortunes would re- 

 peat. Nor was I less inclined to forgo that higher 

 intellectual pleasure which such a sight is certain 

 to produce. 



Invariably upon such attempts as I did make to 

 proceed, some exhilarating contact of my foot with 

 a flounder or the more exciting touch of a startled 

 eel, contrived further to arrest the casual tenor of 

 my course. The novelty of these numerous sights 

 and encounters, however, was as nothing to that 

 of the singular meeting which I am now about to 

 describe and which was the climax of that series of 

 wonders which occurred that marvelous morning. 



And yet this meeting occurred in the most com- 

 monplace manner — I was standing in the midst of 

 a mussel-bed which rose reef-like out of the shal- 

 low depths, engrossed in the erratic course of a 

 swimming scallop that in some way had been car- 

 ried from the harbor by the preceding tide. The 

 rapid opening and closing of its bivalve shell had 

 brought it close to the edge of my tiny island, to 

 which point it was followed by a company of curi- 

 ous minnows attracted doubtless by its appearance 

 of floundering, fluttering helplessness, which indi- 



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