276 I N A G U A 



if a portion of your dining-room floor would suddenly wake 

 up and amble off into the kitchen. For a second I stared in- 

 credulously, and then smiled to myself. A flounder, of course. 

 I should have known. So perfectly did the creature match 

 the white sand that even when it settled a few feet away I 

 had difficulty locating it. Nor could I begrudge it its little 

 deceit, for I knew it was its sole means of securing a liveli- 

 hood and protection from its enemies. 



The flounder gave me a good demonstration a short time 

 later of how it employed its camouflage. A young bluehead, 

 a brilliant fish of yellow, blue and black, left the shelter of a 

 cluster of coral and idly drifted over the sand in the direction 

 of a towering finger sponge. The flounder was quite out of 

 sight and the only indication of its presence was a slight rise 

 in the surface of the sea floor. By looking carefully I could 

 just discern the creature's eyes mounted on low turrets. As 

 the bluehead approached these moved very slightly and fo- 

 cused on the victim. Unsuspecting, the fish floated nearer 

 until it hovered exactly over the spot where the flounder 

 rested on the bottom. There was a quick motion and with 

 a swirl of white sand the flounder seized the bluehead, gave a 

 few quick gulps, and then settled on the sand again where it 

 wriggled slightly until the sand flowed over its fins. Briefly, 

 after devouring the bluehead, the flounder altered color, as- 

 suming a light brown tone, but this soon faded away and it 

 once more mierged indistinctly with the piles of coral and the 

 loose grains. 



I began to look for other forms of deception and realized 

 I had entered a whole world of it. Near my elbow, growing 

 out of a piece of dead meandrina coral was an informal garden 

 of maize-colored flowers whose petals unfolded in a graceful 

 spiral. These petals were long and delicate and were faintly 

 barred with alternate rows of black which gave the blossoms 



