no I N A G U A 



In a series of flapping dashes it threw itself across the algae, 

 striving to reach me. I scrambled out of the way, dropping the 

 line and bounding toward the upper rocks. Its teeth snapped 

 savagely, making a noise like castanets; its mouth was dripping 

 with blood. I knew that one bite of its teeth might result in a 

 festering wound that would take months to heal; I also knew 

 that the blood pouring from the mangled throat mixed with an 

 open cut might very likely prove dangerous, for the blood of 

 most eels is highly poisonous, so much so that a few cubic centi- 

 meters would be enough to cause an agonizing death similar 

 to that produced by a rattlesnake wound. Vividly I remembered 

 a laboratory experiment I had once seen when a rabbit was 

 injected with the substance derived from the blood of the com- 

 mon eel, ichthyotoxin it is called; the poor bunny died in con- 

 vulsions. Also, I have seen the hands of fishermen swollen and 

 infected from cutting eels for crab bait when the substance had 

 seeped into open splits on their fingers. 



The beast slid into the water again and strove to get away. 

 This time I grasped the line well out of its range and dragged it 

 high out of the reach of the surf where it lay gasping and thrash- 

 ing. It took quite some time to die; almost four hours passed be- 

 fore I ventured to examine it closely. Several times when I had 

 thought it dead and prodded it with a stick, it suddenly turned 

 and snapped at the wood. One piece, nearly an inch in thickness, 

 was ground into slivers. The hook was well down into its 

 stomach and had to be extracted with a knife. The skin of the 

 creature was thick and leathery with no visible scales and was 

 covered with a heavy layer of slime. This mucus had been 

 scraped away where the skin had dragged over the rocks and 

 showed a bright blue integument beneath. The slime itself was 

 brilliant and translucent; the combination of blue skin and yel- 

 low mucus made the animal appear green. Altogether it was a 

 very unsavory looking beast. Its eyes were small and evil; 



