THE SCHOOLS OF LITTLE ARROWS 



tossed three tiny pebbles simultaneously. As they 

 sank, there opened beneath each of them a round 

 hole, and soon they all dropped through three sep- 

 arate wells and the trio of apertures closed up 

 again. There was no especial fright, simply a very 

 reasonable withdrawing from the unusual phenome- 

 non of pebbles dropping from the sky. 



In the dark hull of the Sea-Fern wreck on which 

 I was lying there were a number of Little Arrows 

 or Silversides and I captured and imprisoned one 

 in a narrow hand aquarium. Atherina is a perfectly 

 good little fish and once seen he will never be for- 

 gotten, but to put an adequate and easily visualized 

 description of him on paper is most difficult. He is 

 long and minnow-shaped, with a broad band along 

 the side of glittering silver tinsel, a small mouth and 

 a huge eye. That is the rough elevation, the blue- 

 print sketch, but gives no idea of the delicacy of 

 the turquoise-green back, which, in a certain angle 

 of the sun, shifts to molten silver, the unnamed blue 

 of the head, the wonderful little branched color- 

 cells which set off his fins and tail, and finally 

 the cold silver of the great eye. The eye alone shows 

 the Little Arrows to be creatures of fear, and they 

 are set, like those of a rabbit, on the very sides of the 

 head, looking behind as well as sideways — the eye 

 of a pursued, not of a pursuer in life's race. So 

 large are these eyes that ten of them would cover 

 the entire surface of one side of the fish, to compare 

 with which a man's eyes would have to measure six 

 inches across. 



241 



