CHAPTER XXXIX 



THE SINGING FISH 



HAPPENED one day, on returning from a long 

 day's fishing, where the sport had been constant 

 and active, to lie down flat in the bottom of the 

 stern of the boat, which at that moment was 

 floating over comparatively shallow water near a little 

 rounded beach formed by a deep canon, above which a mass 

 of vine-like Nereocystis, the giant of all giant kelps, floated 

 and coiled like snakes. There was something soothing about 

 the murmur of the water at my ear, and at once I noticed 

 a peculiar sound, a musical clicking, not at all like the swash 

 of water or the ripple of waves, a clear distinct musical note 

 which came from all about and gradually disappeared. 



I raised myself up and found that the boatman had pulled 

 off into deeper water, water deepened very quickly here ; in 

 fact a big ship could strike her bowsprit onto the rocky 

 coast in many places and go down out of sight at their base 

 in blue water. I told the boatman to pull back and in a few 

 moments I could hear the strange notes again, and to be sure 

 that it was not a vain imagining, I made the boatman listen 

 and he too heard the sounds, and we found that they were 

 confined to an area of about four hundred square feet, and 

 were more intense in a certain place. 



The next day I returned to the place with a friend who 

 was more or less on familiar terms with Nature in her 

 variety, but the dulcet notes came not, the singer was not 

 only out of time, but out of hearing, but my companion 

 said he had often heard it in certain shallows of San Diego 

 Bay. " I was drifting along shore one day," he said, " very 



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