206 NIMMOD OF THE SEA; OR, 



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tusks, but a blow with the heavy seal -club brought him to 

 earth. Being in ior a joyous time, we worked up material 

 to the best advantage, and decorated ourselves with vines, 

 the flowers of air-plauts, and passion-vine. Then, with our 

 prize slung over a pole, we marched to the beach, chorusing, 



" Though it mins, it hails, it snows, it blows, 

 Yet this day a boar must die." 



We came in jolly and thirsty, and infinitely more steady 

 than the barons of old from their royal boar-hunts. In our 

 hog we found material for a sea-pie. The rock bearing our 

 ship's name was almost buried in the sand, and all hands 

 united in rolling it up out of the -reach of the waves. A soli- 

 tary grave was pointed out as being that of a poor fellow 

 who was drowned in attempting to swim ashore and desert 

 to this land of continuous shower-baths. With slender, 

 barbed spears we took several varieties of the beautiful par- 

 rot-fish, which abound in the coral groves in the bottom of 

 the bay. These fishes are of beautiful metallic colors — red, 

 green, and purple, finely contrasted in belts and spots, and 

 in blending, clouds. The head, plated in an armor of broad, 

 thick scales of the greatest brilliancy, is fitted for brows- 

 ing on the zoophytes which dwell in the sharp cells of the 

 branching corals and madrepores. In these growths, and 

 amidst the waving tangle of many- colored marine plants, 

 these fish, with multitudes of other strange and beautiful 

 creatures, are seen in great numbers. From caves great 

 cray-fish protrude their fringed heads and azure feelers ; and 

 the loathsome toad-fish creeps from bunch to bunch of the 

 grasses. Flapping over the tops of the marine forest we 

 also see the brown devil-fish, and the echinus, or sea-eggs. 

 Tempted to reach for some sea-flowers, and wading the shal- 

 low, I touched a searegg with my bare foot, and ran to the 

 shore in agony. The thing is like a porcupine, and the sole 



