V 'Among the Sharks and Whales' 421 



it would be were the sea suddenly drained away, 

 leaving a nearly perpendicular coral cliff miles high!) 

 which teemed with more strange and beautiful things 

 than I have ever seen within the same compass 

 elsewhere : — giant cuttle-fish with beaks like parrots, 

 shooting backwards into dark crannies, and glaring 

 at you with their round black eyes, like evil owls out 

 of ivy bushes ; long-eared aplysia, or sea-hares, who 

 carried curious transparent shells concealed in their 

 innermost inwards, and threw out quantities of a 

 beautiful bright purple liquor — ill-smelling but fit to 

 dye the robe of Caesar himself — when you tried to 

 extract it ; holothuria, irepang, sea-slug, worth their 

 weight in silver for the Chinese market for soup- 

 making purposes ; big cowrie shells, white, spotted, 

 and lemon -coloured, prowling about on their big 

 feet, like snails, but, unlike them, almost entirely 

 enveloped in their black mantles, with only a narrow 

 opening left for the shell to peep out of, like Spanish 

 donnas going to mass — which by the way accounts 

 for the exquisite polish of that class of univalves as 

 you see them on your mantelpieces ; ovules and 

 mutras and harps innumerable, as were also the 

 bright and brilliant fishes in flashing shoals and 

 infinite variety of beauty ; and great sharks with their 

 yellow and black striped dorsal fins, cutting through 

 the water as they cruised about searching for their 

 shell-dinners, utterly declining to give us the slightest 

 chance of sticking a harpoon in them as we waded 

 from knee to breast high among the watery wonders. 



