Adult Joys 191 



skirted the vast masses of myriad-tenanted weed that 

 go to make up the curious ocean eddy known as the 

 Sargasso Sea, and many a quaint fish found its way 

 down into my ever-ready stomach as I prowled around 

 ready for stragglers, yet not daring to venture too 

 far into that dense entanglement, sacred to the up- 

 bringing of an incalculable number of young sea crea- 

 tures, because of its security against such sturdy 

 marauders as I had now become. I learned that ships 

 might be safely consorted with, and usefully too, 

 because of their pleasant habit of scaring up the smaller 

 creatures upon which I loved to feed, but on several 

 occasions I very narrowly escaped destruction, by 

 missing a lure let down before my dazzled eyes by 

 some hungry miscreant on board one of these floating 

 things. 



But I shall never forget an experience I had, which 

 I think did more to round my girth and stiffen my 

 sturdy frame than any other. It was in the North 

 Atlantic too, on the south-western verge of the Sar- 

 gasso Sea. I had been hungrily pursuing a vast school 

 of flying-fish, and occasionallj' snapping up a straggler 

 or two that only served to make my hunger more 

 acute, when I suddenly darted into a vast black shadow 

 (it was blazing noon), in the cool of which it seemed 

 that all the edible fish imaginable were congregated. 

 I swam leisurely to and fro, and filled my maw almost 

 to bursting, then languidly surveyed my surroundings. 

 I found that I was beneath a wooden ship, deserted 

 of her crew for long, yet so buoyant by reason of her 

 cargo that she could not sink. Upon her sheltering 

 planks had clustered an immense mass of sea-growth, 

 weed, barnacles, limpets, and so forth, and of course 

 these had attracted to themselves, as offering easily 

 obtained food, an enormous number of fish, both 



