80 Fish Stories 



chain. His three-cornered, saw-edged teeth, went as souve- 

 nirs to the ladies. His fins were used as wings for Bosco, 

 the messenger-boy in the ship's circus, and in his stomach 

 we found an ice-cold wall-eye from Lake Winnepeg. Cling- 

 ing to the shark were half a dozen black shark pilots or 

 remoras, a curious fish of the open sea, which rides free 

 in the ocean, clinging to large fishes by a sucker on the 

 back of its head. 



The shark was young and unsophisticated, its length being 

 only about twelve feet. On our casting him back into the 

 sea, without jaws or insides, the other monsters became in- 

 terested, and one more of about the same size had time to 

 take the hook before the steamer started again ; and he, too, 

 had in his stomach a frozen Canadian wall-eye from the 

 Great Lakes of the North. 



The Bone Key, in Florida, Cayo Hueso, commonly called 

 Key West through a spurious notion of etymology, is like- 

 wise a coral island, but very different from these of the 

 Pacific. It is part of a great barrier reef, the outermost of 

 a succession of such reefs, which make up the Peninsula of 

 Florida. It is the mangrove, which everywhere in the trop- 

 ics east and west, turns barrier reefs into lines of islands. 

 Its branches reach down into the sea and take root on the 

 bottom, making a wonderful tangle, a gathering place for 

 rocks and mud and trash, and a wonderful refuge for little 

 fishes. Thus the fruit of the mangrove has done much for 

 Key West, and some earth disturbance has lifted it a little 

 above its natural level, making a large and well-marked 

 island. 



On the north side of Key West is a little sheltered harbor 

 where the fishermen land with their boat-loads of live fishes, 

 kept in the hold or well, which is pierced with holes to 

 admit the water, which, of course, runs no higher than the 

 water line. And here they kill their fishes to suit custo- 

 mers, throwing overboard the offal, and this in turn fills the 

 bay with sharks. We caught two from the little wharf there, 



