1 88 The Albacore 



rock masses, whose summits are crowned by eyrie- 

 like villages, accessible only to goats and island moun- 

 taineers, who descend from these amazing fastnesses 

 for the fishing with as much caution to-day as they did 

 when every village of the kind was a pirate stronghold 

 whose denizens preyed upon any neighbour with strict 

 impartiality. 



Moreover, you do not, cannot know of the treasures 

 lying hid in those dim depths, you can only faintly 

 guess. But a thousand years of warfare and piracy 

 carried on in the vicinity of the richest and most 

 artistic nations of the old world has made almost every 

 foot of the sea-bed within a few miles of land a veritable 

 storehouse of wonderful wealth in precious metals 

 and almost equally precious artistry. Around groups 

 of marble and bronze statuary, amid heaps of gold, 

 silver, and gems, twine the beautiful red, pink, and 

 black coral, palpitate the masses of living sponge, 

 at such depths as no diver has yet reached to return 

 living. 



And amidst all this splendour, on cunning little 

 plateaux of silvery sand in level nooks floored with 

 powdered lava, in alcoves paved with coral fragments 

 ground small by the never-ceasing attrition of the 

 waves alone, I and some millions of my fellow Albacores 

 were born. I did not then know, as I have learned 

 since, that in this spot as in every other where fish are 

 hatched, there were hosts of the baser sort of fish, 

 yes, even as low as the Medusae, those backboneless 

 masses of jelly that can hardly be said to live in the 

 sense that we higher organisms do, waiting to devour 

 us as soon as we had attained an independent existence, 

 all hampered as we were by the sustaining yelk attached 

 to our waists during the first two days of our lives. 

 We had no protectors ; if our parents had been there 



