200 I N A G U A 



things easy. Still gritting my teeth I sat down on the sand and 

 tried to relax for a few moments. In ten minutes the finger had 

 not shown signs of swelling and the pain had subsided slightly. 

 In twenty minutes it stung no worse than if a bee had pierced 

 it; ten minutes later the pain was completely gone, the only 

 evidence of the injury being a tiny red dot where the barb 

 had entered. Like nearly everyone not fully acquainted with 

 scorpions, I had believed scorpion sting a serious poison. Since 

 then I have been bitten several times and the result has always 

 been the same, a painful half hour with no further infection. 



Lantern Head is a deep indentation in the Inaguan coast, a 

 landlocked shallow natural harbor with a peculiar rock forma- 

 tion at its mouth from w^hich it derives its name. In places the 

 shore is lined with mangroves; clinging to the roots of these 

 was a thick culture of small oysters and mussels, many of which 

 were raised well out of water when the tide was low. The 

 oysters were a welcome addition to my diet of doves which was 

 beginning to pall. I pulled several bunches off the outermost 

 arched roots and found a half dozen Panopeus crabs stowed in 

 the crevices. These scampered away and sought new shelters. 

 No doubt my burrowing owl had lit somewhere on a man- 

 grove root and spied the moving form of a mud crab and de- 

 voured it on the spot. 



The third link of this zoological chain was forged quickly. 

 One of the Panopeus crabs fell on the smooth mud beneath the 

 mangrove roots and was immediately seized by a larger man- 

 grove crab, a brilliantly colored crustacean with scarlet claws 

 and legs which rushed up and down with a quick motion and 

 tore out the Panopeus' pincers, rendering it helpless. The man- 

 grove crab then did a brutally cruel and savage thing. Holding 

 the helpless mud crab in its claws it deliberately pulled off its 

 victim's legs a joint at a time and let the fragments fall on 

 the silt where they lay with tiny bits of shredded muscle quiv- 



