1 88 TROPIC DAYS 



Pushing his spear a couple of feet through, the boy 

 grips the prize with both hands, or bends the wire into 

 the form of a hook. Fortune may continue to smile, 

 and the boy takes several during the afternoon. 



Many boys enhance the charms of solitude by ingeni- 

 ously tricking eels, Nature presenting them with an 

 efficient engine of deceit and destruction, so designed 

 that neither the agitations of art nor the invention of 

 science could much improve it. About two feet of the 

 thong or lorum of one of the creeping palms (Calamus 

 obstruens) is all that is necessary. These lora are armed 

 with definitely spaced whorls of recurved hooks, keen 

 as needles, true as steel, about one-eighth of an inch 

 long. Three or four of the whorls are removed to provide 

 an unfretful but firm grip. The pot-holes and shallow 

 pools and gullies and trickling creeks are populated by 

 nervous, yet inquisitive, semi-transparent prawns, upon 

 which eels liberally diet. So silent and steady of move- 

 ment is the boy that even the alert prawns are unaware 

 of, or become accustomed to, his presence; and what 

 is there to warn the eel, enjoying its comfort among the 

 dead leaves in the gloomiest corner of the pool, of 

 danger ? Could any but a black boy detect the differ- 

 ence between the brown sodden leaves and the half- 

 inch of body which the eel has unwittingly exposed ? 

 The "pig-gee" (as some term the lorum) is used with 

 almost surgical delicacy of touch to hook away two or 

 three of the leaves. Then it is placed parallel to what- 

 ever increased length has thus been made visible, and 

 with a decisive twitch the eel is torn from its retreat 

 and killed off-hand. 



Even the shy, long-armed little prawns (Palcemon 

 australis) do not escape special means for their de- 

 struction. A pliant rod about four feet long is improvised 

 from the midrib of the creeping palm before mentioned , 



