SCHNAPPER AND BLACK BREAM 155 



an anchorage as even a professional undertaker 

 could design. Never have the caprices of travel 

 landed me in a worse hole, at any rate ;f or so long a 

 period. We spread quinine in the form of powder 

 on our early slice of bread-and-butter as gladly 

 as if it had been foie gras, and only such 

 precautions, I firmly believe, saved the whole 

 company from going down with fever. 



That ended my fishing in Australia, with the 

 exception of one or two stray perch-like fishes, 

 which I caught at various anchorages within the 

 region of the Barrier Reef. These halts, however, 

 were few and far between, and less time was spent 

 in catching fish than in watching them, from 

 hammerheaded sharks down to beautiful little 

 painted kinds that sported amid the corals like 

 gaudy humming-birds among rare tropical flowers. 



At Thursday Island we fell in with some pearl 

 divers, kanakas, of course, and their white over- 

 seer. Two of the divers had a pretty fight, at 

 the end of which part of a knife blade belonging 

 to one was hidden in the buttocks of the other, 

 but no serious damage seems to have been done. 

 A most amusing fellow here came on board in 

 the second class, one who had spent most of his 

 life loafing among those lotos-islands. He was 

 going with us as far as Batavia, and expected 

 to return thence in a month's time. Once man 

 gets within the spell of those South Seas, there 



