SCHNAPPER AND BLACK BREAM 147 



crevasse with my face and feet pointing upwards. 

 A sense of duty would impel me to take out a 

 rope and ice-axe and gambol on the roof of 

 the world, but the end would come quickly. 

 Even on the mere hummocks that shut out Aus- 

 tralia's desolation from the ocean, Thackeray was 

 followed by a quaking disciple. 



The ultimate and unworthy object of this 

 suicidal monkeying with the steep places of earth 

 was an immense** fish called a " Grouper/' which 

 is apparently hatched from the egg weighing 

 twenty or thirty pounds, at any rate if one may 

 judge from the conversation of amateur fisher- 

 men out there, for I never heard any reference 

 to a small one. This heavy, pig-lipped fish I saw 

 now and then at the Wooloomooloo Fishmarket, 

 which I sometimes visited in the early morning, 

 walking down through the domain and swimming 

 in the enclosed bath, through the gratings of which 

 we always pictured sharks staring at us as the fox 

 stared at the grapes. There was also at any rate 

 one specimen in the Museum. Alive I never saw 

 one, though the insidious Thackeray ever bade 

 me hope against hope, and about once a week I 

 uncomplainingly risked my life over some yawn- 

 ing abyss to gratify this silly ambition. Now 

 and again my hook was held for a tense moment 

 in the boiling surf, and the line came back to me 

 without it. The obvious aggressor was one of 



