THE GREAT REEF 



273 



helter-skelter by a childish hand. But the simile of feathers 

 faded away when I bent close to one and saw the hundreds 

 of tiny tentacles protruding from the shafts marking the pres- 

 ence of the stinging colonial animals which, bound together 

 in feather-like association, go to make up the entirety. These 

 sea-plumes were the most beautifully curving creations I have 

 ever seen. Never in all their waving back and forth did they 

 assume an ungraceful or awkward position. 



The fishes, too, took on this same air of lightness. They 

 soared without effort, flitting carelessly between the branches. 

 Most amazing were some wrasses which were nibbling on 

 algae on the rocks. At the beginnings of their swings they 

 would nibble, pulling the vegetation from the boulders, and 

 then sweep out into space, preserving the exact spacings as 

 when they were eating, reach the perihelion of their swaying, 

 and then return to the precise points which they had deserted 

 when they once again resumed their interrupted feeding. Even 

 a big jewfish, a dark brown fellow fully three feet long and 

 weighing a hundred pounds or more, seemed to partake of 

 this buoyancy. I first saw it far back in a deep dark hole in 

 the farthest recesses of the coral. Only its head protruded 

 when I discovered it but when I grasped a sea fan to anchor 

 myself, I could see that for all its ponderousness, it too was 

 airily swinging with the water. Without moving a muscle the 

 fish would float motionless in its hole and then gracefully 

 gUde out head foremost to a position midway between two 

 great coral trees and then slowly tail first back to exactly the 

 same position. I watched the jewfish for Rvq minutes and in 

 all that time never saw it move so much as a fin, yet it always 

 returned directly to its hiding place. 



I tried walking down the avenues of sea fans but found 

 it nearly impossible. From the deck of the boat the bottom 

 had seemed quite smooth, or at most slightly rolling. Instead 



