AFTER THE HURRICANE. 227 



mek um fo' yo'. S'pose yo' try um, while me ketch 

 de fish fo' fish wiv ! " 



He drew out a pair of paddles from beneath the 

 bamboos and then set me afloat in the canoe, which 

 behaved beautifully and skimmed like a bird over the 

 water of my placid bay. When I turned toward shore 

 again I found Thomas Ned with a bucket full of small 

 fish, the largest of which was about the size of a big 

 mackerel. He had turned them out from the rocks 

 at the bottom of the pond, where they had attached 

 themselves by peculiar sucking-disks on the tops of 

 their heads ; for these fish were those strange remoras^ 

 which have the faculty of affixing themselves to any 

 object they please. 



" But what are you going to do with those worth- 

 less fish?" I asked. " They aren't fit to eat; didn't 

 you know that ? " 



" Yis, me massa ; but dey's fit f er somet'in' else. 

 Dey's what um ketch de big fish wiv, sah." 



I didn't like to expose further ignorance to my 

 servant, so asked no more questions. We were soon 

 at the inner edge of the coral reef, on which I had 

 been nearly wrecked the year before, and there I saw 

 what a rich fish preserve I had in this inclosed bay. 



There were swift-swimming barracoutas, rainbow- 

 hued Jew and angel fish, immense sharks, and lazy 

 sea turtles without number, hundreds and thousands 

 of them, and all visible in the clear water above the 

 white and glistening coral bottom. 



Eeaching into the bucket Thomas Ned drew out 

 one of the fish therein and looped a line around its 



