SHORES OF THE CLYDE AND FIRTH. 
31 
in connection with the latter, the authenticity and striking 
nature of the following narrative, the relator of which was 
well known to the author, is the only excuse for its inser- 
tion here : — " I was once coming home from Calcutta, 
mate of a trig little barque bound for London. Our 
boatswain was a Glasgow man like myself. We had run 
well down on the Cape, when one fine morning, during my 
watch on deck, I was sitting on the poop rail buried in the 
pages of an interesting book. Looking up, I noticed the 
boatswain beckoning me towards him where he stood at 
the waist of the ship. I went, and looking over the bul- 
wark to where he pointed, I at once observed a large fish 
with a curious round-shaped head, furnished with two large 
eyes as big as a common tea-cup saucer. The news of the 
presence of the brute soon went over all hands, and by the 
skipper's orders a hook Avas baited with a piece of pork, 
and we soon had him a secure captive dangling to our 
yard-arm. We had men on board who had sailed the 
world over, but no one could tell what species it belonged 
to ; and with the aid of his natural history the skipper was 
also baffled to tell, and he ultimately handed it over to the 
crew. It was some hundreds of pounds in weight, plump 
and inviting in appearance. ' I'll have a piece of it,' 
cried one. ' So will I,' said another. ' I would like to see 
it tried first,' cried a third; and as the sequel will show, 
well for the crew that this last suggestion was acted upon. 
Accordingly the cook cut out a pretty large piece, and 
placed it in his coppers, along with two silver spoons, in 
order to detect the inherent poison that might be in the 
fish. It was speedily prepared, but on inspection, the 
spoons, he thought, did not show a sufficient quantity of 
discolouration to justify him in pronouncing it poisonous. 
However, before he would risk serving it out to the crew — ■ 
