SCHOOL OF BROWN CETACEANS. 
229 
weed, witli its colony of sailor-crabs and little 
fishes; the spar of some lost ship, white with 
clustering barnacles ; the clouds, the water-spouts, 
the changes of the wind, arc all so many incidents 
Avliich are viewed and watched mth absorbing 
interest. 
About one hundred miles from Java Head, at a 
time when the sea was nearly calm, a huge tree, 
torn by some tempest from its native forest, came 
drifting by the ship, hoary with clustering Lepades, 
and with swimming-crabs clinging to it as ship- 
wrecked mariners to a raft. Eager for the barnacles, 
short, banded tmnk-fish kept close alongside, making 
sudden onslaughts upon the helpless cirrhepedes. A 
shoal of bright green parrot-fish hovered in tlie rear, 
and more lustrous still, three blue sharks were 
darting about. In the distance, a school of broA\Ti 
cetaceans, round -backed and long-nosed, came 
coursing along, vaulting, head downwards, and 
wantonly pursuing each other. Onwards they went, 
by fifties and by hundreds, leaping, tumbling, and 
dashing the spray about, so as to 'cause the mast- 
