SEA-FAN MAKERS. 207 



luck, and put into port once in fifteen days or so, 

 they are indulged with a feast of maccaronk 

 These privations make it rather rough work, it 

 must be confessed, for a mariner, especially when 

 it is remembered that it lasts seven months ; but 

 if to this be added the brutality of the captains, 

 whose tyranny and cruelty, as I have heard, ex- 

 ceed anything that has ever been recounted to me 

 before, we have a combination of sufferings which 

 go far to justify the description given to me of 

 this service by one engaged in it, as being an 

 ' Inferno terrestre.' " l 



Having had occasion to mention the " sea-pens " in 

 the early portion of this chapter, and dismiss them 

 abruptly, it may be permitted to return to them for 

 a page or two, especially as one species is common 

 enough in our Northern seas, although rare in the 

 South, and it may be the good fortune of some of 

 our readers to make their personal acquaintance. 

 These colonies are not fixed, as are the sea-fans, but, 

 on the contrary, are free swimmers. In shape they 

 bear some resemblance to a feather or pen, with a 

 common axis, and lateral barbs or pinnules, which 

 bear the polyps ; these pinnules are longest near the 

 centre, and shorter towards either end (fig. 40). The 

 polyps are arranged in transverse rows along the outer 



1 The "Technologist," vol. ii. p. 22 (1862). 



