Chapter C: Arthur Pearson, Ltd (3)

I sat quite still for some little time, trying to sum up the situation, but the night being very cold, I had to move or get benumbed. Leaving my bag and bed where it was I groped my way into the town, and after about a quarter of an hour’s stumbling along what I afterwards found was the main street, I saw a feeble light. Making for it at once I discovered a man standing at the door of a lowly shanty smoking, the light I had seen proceeding from a tallow candle flickering in the interior. Receiving my salutation with gruff heartiness the man bade me welcome to such shelter as he had, so I lugged my dunnage up and entered. He showed me an ancient squab whereon I might lie, and closing the street door bade me good night, disappearing into some mysterious recess in a far corner. I composed myself for sleep, but the place was simply alive with fleas, which, tasting fresh stranger, gave me a lively time. Before morning I was bitterly envious of the other occupant of the room, who lay on the bare floor in a drunken stupor, impervious to either cold or vermin. At the first gleam of dawn I left, taking a brisk walk until somebody was astir in the place, when I soon got quarters in a boarding-house. Then as early as possible I made for the shipping office, finding to my surprise that the vessel in want of a mate was the ancient relic that had so much amused us as we entered the harbour. After a good deal of searching, the commander of her was found--a bluff, red-faced man with a watery, wandering eye, whose first words betrayed him for a Welshman. He was as anxious to get a mate as I was to get a ship, so we were not long coming to terms--£6 per month. Her name I found was the _Amulet_, last from Santos, and now awaiting a cargo of coal for St. John, New Brunswick. No sooner had I signed articles than the skipper invited me to drink with him, and instantly became confidential. But as he had already been drinking pretty freely, and even his sober English was no great things, I was not much the wiser for our conference. However, bidding him good day, I went on board and took charge, finding the old rattletrap in a most miserable condition, the second mate in a state of mutiny, and the crew doing just whatever they pleased. I had not been on board an hour before I was in possession of the history of their adventures since leaving England eighteen months before. I found too that I was the fourth mate that voyage, and judging from appearances I thought it unlikely that I should be the last. As soon as he had finished unburdening himself to me, the second mate, who seemed a decent fellow enough, started to pack up, swearing in both Welsh and English that he was finished with her. Of course I had no means of preventing him from going even if I had wished to do so, and away he went. Then I turned my attention to the ship, finding the small crew (seven all told) desperately sullen, but still willing to obey my orders. Oh, but she was a wreck, and so dirty that I hardly knew whether it was worth while attempting to cleanse her. There was abundance of good fresh food though, and one of the men helped the grimy muttering Welsh lad who was supposed to be the cook, so that the meals were at least eatable. According to my orders I was to report progress to the skipper every morning at his hotel, and next morning I paid him a visit. I found him in bed, although it was eleven o’clock, with a bottle of brandy sticking out from under his pillow and quite comfortably drunk. He received my remarks with great gravity, graciously approving of what I had done, and assuring me that he was very ill indeed. I left him so, thinking deeply over my queer position, and returned on board to find the second mate back again in a furious rage at not being able to get at the “old man,” but resigned to going with us to St. John as a passenger. Well, as time went on I managed to get her in some sort of trim, received the cargo on board, bent the sails, and made all ready for sea, the second mate lolling at his ease all day long or in his bunk asleep. Every morning I saw the skipper, always in bed and always drunk. Thus three weeks passed away. When the vessel had been a week ready for sea, during most of which time a steady fair wind for our departure had been blowing, I had a visitor. After a few civil questions he told me he was the agent, and proposed giving the captain one day longer in which to clear out, failing which he would on his own responsibility send the vessel to sea without him. I of course raised no objection, but seized the opportunity to get a few pounds advance of wages which I at once despatched home to my wife. The agent’s threat was effectual, for at noon the next day my commander came on board accompanied by a tugboat which towed us out to sea, although a fair wind was blowing. No sooner had the pilot left us to our own devices than Captain Jones retired to his bunk, and there he remained, his cabin no bad representation of a miniature Malebolge. Details impossible.

Unfortunately I had so severely injured my left hand that I could not use it at all, and the second mate, though perfectly friendly with me, would do nothing but just keep a look-out while I got some sleep; he wouldn’t even trim sail. The first day out I took sights for longitude by the chronometer, which I had kept regularly wound since I had been on board, but I found to my horror that it had been tampered with, and was utterly useless. It was now the latter end of November, fogs and gales were of everyday occurrence, the currents were very strong and variable, and I was on an utterly strange coast in command for the first time in my life. When I saw the sun, which was seldom, I thought myself lucky to get the latitude, and Sable Island under my lee with its diabolical death-traps haunted me waking and sleeping. My only hope of escaping disaster was in the cod-schooners, which, as much at home in those gloomy, stormy waters as a cabman in London streets, could always be relied on to give one a fairly accurate position. Then the rotten gear aloft kept giving out, and there was nothing to repair it with, while the half-frozen men could hardly be kept out of their little dog-hole at all. Only one man in the ship was having a good time, and that was the skipper. Hugging a huge jar of “chain lightning” brandy he never wanted anything else, and no one ever went near him except the poor little scalawag of a cook, who used to rate him in Welsh until the discord was almost deafening. But if I were to tell fairly the story of that trip round Nova Scotia it would take a hundred pages. So I must hurry on to say that we _did_ reach St. John by God’s especial mercy, and laid her alongside the wharf.

I am afraid I shall hardly be believed when I say that Captain Jones reappeared on deck at once and went ashore, promising to return by six o’clock. Now the tide rises and falls in St. John’s over thirty feet, so when night came the _Amulet_ was resting on the mud, and the edge of the wharf was very nearly level with our main-top. I had prepared a secure gangway with a bright lantern for my superior’s return, but about eleven o’clock that night he strolled down and walked calmly over the edge of the wharf where the gangway was not. All hands were aroused by his frantic cries of “Misser Bewlon, Misser Bewlon, for Gaw’ sake safe my lyve!” After much search we found him and hoisted him on board out of the mud in which he was embedded to the armpits. No bones were broken, and next day he was well enough to climb ashore and get into a conveyance which took him up town to another “hotel.” A repetition of the tactics of Sydney now set in, except that I did not visit him so frequently. The second mate and one of the men got their discharge out of him and left us, in great glee at their escape. Then I think some one must have remonstrated with him whose words were not to be made light of, for one day he came on board and tried to get all hands to sign a paper that he had got drawn up, certifying that he was a strictly sober man! He was _so_ hurt at their refusal. Finally he re-embarked, bringing a tugboat and pilot with him as before, and the startling news that we were to tow right across the Bay of Fundy and up the Basin of Minas to Parrsboro’, but no sooner were we abreast of Partridge Island than again my commander disappeared below. All through the night the panting tug toiled onward with us, the pilot remaining at his post till dawn. Fortunately for my peace of mind I knew little about the perilous navigation of this great bay, the home of the fiercest tides in the world. But when, drawing near Cape Blomidon, I saw the rate at which we were being hurled along by the fury of the inrushing flood, I felt profoundly thankful that the responsibility for our safety was not upon me. However, we arrived intact that afternoon and proceeded up the river, which was as crooked as a ram’s horn, and only began to have any water in its bed when it was half flood outside. As we neared the village the pilot asked me to what wharf we were going, as we could not lay in the dry river bed. I knew no more than he did, and neither of us could shake any sense into the unconscious skipper. So we tied her up to the first jetty we came to, and pilot and tugboat took their departure. There was a fine to-do when the wharfinger heard of our arrival, and I had to go up to the village and ask all round for information as to where we were to lie. I got instructions at last, and shifted to a berth where we were allowed to remain. Next day the old man went ashore again, saying nothing to me, and I remained in ignorance of his whereabouts for ten days. Meanwhile lumber began to arrive for us, and a scoundrelly stevedore came on board with the skipper’s authority to stow the cargo. He and I quickly came to loggerheads, for I did not at all fancy the way he was “blowing her up,” and the dread of our winter passage to Europe lay heavy upon me. But I found that all power to interfere with him was taken out of my hands, and I just had to stand by and see potential murder being done.

At last one day at dinner-time the old man paid us a visit, characteristically announcing himself by falling between the vessel and the wharf into the ice-laden water. Of course he wasn’t hurt--didn’t even get a chill, but he was taken back to his “hotel,” and came no more to see us. With the completion of our deck-load my patience was exhausted, and as soon as she was ready for sea, I hunted him up and demanded my discharge. I felt prepared to take all reasonable risks, but to cross the Atlantic in December with a vessel like a top-heavy bladder under me, and myself the sole officer, was hardly good enough. Of course he wouldn’t release me, and the upshot was, to cut my yarn short, that I remained ashore penniless, while he towed back to St. John, engaged another unfortunate mate, and after a week’s final spree, sailed for home. As I had expected, she got no farther than the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. There her old bones were finally broken up in a howling snowstorm, in which several of the crew were frozen to death, but he escaped to worry better men again.

Two years after in the Court of Queen’s Bench we met again, when I arose, the one essential witness to his misdoings, and made him feel as if my turn had come at last.

AMONG THE ENCHANTED ISLES

Enchained by the innumerable complexities of modern city existence, how strangely, how sweetly, do the dreams of roaming amid isles of perpetual summer come to the pale slave of civilisation. Leaning back in his office chair, the pen drops idly from his relaxed fingers, while the remorseless hum from the human hive without loses its distinctive note and becomes by some strange transmutation the slumberous murmur of snowy surf upon far-off coral shores. The dim ceiling, that so often has seemed to press upon his brain like the load of Atlas, melts upward into a celestial canopy of a blue so deep and pure that it is the last expression of the Infinite.

* * * * *

On the wings of fancy, swifter and more easeful than those of the albatross, he is wafted to those fairy shores where Nature smiles in changeless youth and winterless glow. Through every weary sinew thrills the bright message of life, the unconscious outcome of perfect health absorbed from perfect surroundings. He is back again in the days of the world’s infancy, feeling his mid-millennial vigour bounding in every pulse, flooding every artery. In cunningly-fashioned canoe, with grass-woven sails, he floats upon the radiant sea, so like to the heaven above that his gliding shallop seems to swing through the boundless ether, a sprite, a fay of the fruitful brain.

Then as the flood-tide of living bubbles over the brim of restraint he lifts a mighty voice, a full-throated cry of joy wherein is no speech nor language, only exultant music welling up from deeps of fathomless satisfaction. He springs erect, with flashing eyes, and rolling muscles heaving under his shining skin, such a figure as, made in His own glorious image, the Master gazed upon--and, behold, it was very good. Far below him swim the gorgeous sea-folk, each ablaze with colour, living jewels enhanced by their setting. In mazy evolutions full of grace they woo him to join in their play, to explore with them the splendours of the coral groves, to wreath about his majestic form the tender festoons of sea-flowers and deck himself with glowing shells.

Like a dolphin he dives, deeper and deeper as with grasping hands he overcomes the resisting waters. Deeper and deeper yet until the fervent sunshine is suffused into a milder, tenderer light, and everything around is enwrapped in a beauty-mist, a glamorous illusion that melts all angles into curves of loveliness. He enters into the palaces of the deep, and all the skill of Titanic builders on earth becomes to his mind a thing of naught. Interminable rows of columns, all symmetrical, each perfect in beauty, yet none alike, are arrayed before him; massy architraves, domes light-springing from their piers as bubbles, yet in circumference so vast that their limits are lost in shadow, slender spires of pearl, soaring upward like vapour-wreaths: and all interwoven with the wondrous design a fairy tracery of stone, appearing light and luminous as sea foam. The happy living things troop forth to meet him and sweep in many a delicate whirl around until, recalled by the need of upper air, he waves them farewell and ascends.

Oh! the fierce delight of that swift upward rush, the culminating ecstasy as he bounds into the palpitating air above and lies, so softly cradled, upon the limpid wave! There for a season he floats, drinking deep of the brine-laden air, every touch of the sea a caress, every heart-beat a well-spring of pleasure. Then with a shout he hurls himself forward as if he too were a free citizen of the ocean, emulating with almost equal grace the sinuous spring of the porpoise and the marvellous succession of curves presented by the overwhelming whale. He claims kindred with them all, embraces them; clinging lovingly to their smooth sides he frolics with them, rejoicing in the plenitude of their untainted strength.

Before him rise the islands, mounds of emerald cresting bases of silver sand. Willowy palm-trees dip their roots in the warm wavelets and rear their tufted coronets on high. Darker-leaved, the orange-trees droop their branches shot with golden gleams where the fruit hangs heavily, filling the gentle air with fragrance. Bright-plumaged birds flash amongst the verdure; along the glittering shores rest placidly the sea-fowl returned from their harvesting and comforting their fluffy broods. With huge steps he strides shorewards, and springing lightly from the sand, he reaches in a dozen bounds the crown of the loftiest palm, whose thickly-clustering fruit bids him drink and drink again.

The island folk dread him not; fear has not yet visited those sunny shores. And as he was with the sea-people so is he with their compeers on land, a trusted playfellow, a creature perfect in glory and beauty, able to vie with them in their superb activities, their amazing play of vigour, their abounding joy in the plentiful gifts of Nature.

After those sunny gambols, how sweet the rest on yielding couch of leaves, fanned by sweet zephyrs laden with the subtle scents of luxuriant flowers, and lulled by the slumber-song of the friendly sea. Around him, with drooping wing, nestle the birds; the bejewelled insects hush their busy songs into tenderest murmurs, the green leaves hang in unrustling shade, noiselessly waving over him a cool breath. There is peace and sleep.

“Awake, O laggard!” cry the birds; “awake and live! Joy comes anew. Love and life and strength are calling us, and every sense answers triumphantly. Sweet is the dawn when the splendid sun springs skyward and the quiet night steals away; sweet is the strength of noonday, when downward he sends his shafts of life-giving flame, and we lie in the shade renewing from his exhaustless stores of energy our well-spent strength. But sweetest of all the time when, his majestic ascension accomplished, our sun sweeps westward to his ocean-bed, and all his children hasten to revel in his tempered beams until he hides his glorious face for a season, and night brings her solemn pleasures.”

Swift upspringing the man answers gladly to the call. And forth to meet him come a joyous band of his fellows, their dancing feet scarce touching the earth. Not a weakling among them. Men and women and children alike clean-limbed and strong, with sparkling eyes and perfect gestures. Their nude shapes shine like burnished bronze with natural unguents, their white and well-set teeth glitter as they laugh whole-heartedly, their black, abundant hair is entwined with scarlet hibiscus, and their voices ring musical and full. They do not walk--they bound, they spring, and toss their arms in wildest glee.

Surrounding him, they bear him away to where a crystal river rushes headlong down through a valley of velvet green to cast itself tumultuously over a cliff-lip forty feet into the sea. As it approaches its leap the translucent waters whirl faster and faster in rising wreaths and ridges of dazzling white, until in one snowy mass, crowned with a pearly mist, it hurls itself into the smooth blue depths below. With one accord the wildly gambolling band hurl themselves into those limpid waters some hundreds of yards above the fall. As on softest couch they glide swiftly along, their peals of laughter echoing multitudinously from the green bosoms of the adjacent hills.

Faster and faster still they are borne onward until, singly and in groups, they flash out into the sunshine and plunge into the awaiting ocean. So swiftly do they pass that it seems but a breathing space since, far inland, they sprang from the banks into the river, and they now lie in blissful content upon the quiet sea, every nerve tingling from that frantic, headlong flight. Then, like the care-free children of Nature that they are, they abandon themselves to their wild sea-sports, outdoing the fabled Nereids. Around them gather in sympathy the gorgeous dolphins, the leisurely sharks, the fun-loving porpoises, while over their heads dart incessantly in arrowy flight glittering squadrons of flying-fish.

So they frolic untiringly until, by one impulse moved, they all dash off to where, outside the enormous headland of black rock which shelters the little bay, the vast and solemn ocean swell comes rolling shoreward, towering higher as it comes, until, meeting the bright beach, it raises itself superbly in one magnificent curve of white, and dashes against the firm-set earth with a deep note as of far-off thunder.

The merry players range themselves in line and swim seaward to meet the next wave as it comes. Diving beneath it they reappear upon its creaming shoulders, and by sheer skill balance there, elated almost beyond bearing by the pace of their mighty steed. Higher and higher they rise, clothed by the hissing foam, until from its summit they spring to land and race to the woods.

Only a breathing space passes, and again they come rushing shoreward to where a mimic fleet of light canoes lies covered with boughs to shield them from the sun. As if time were all important, they fling the leaves aside and rush the frail craft into the water, springing in as they glide afloat. Two by two they sail away, an occasional persuasive touch of the paddles sufficing to guide and propel them whithersoever they will.

The sun is nearing the western edge of their world, and his slanting beams are spreading lavishly over the silken waters broad bands of rich and swiftly changing colour. A hush that is holy is stealing over all things, a stillness so profound that the light splash of a flying-fish tinkles clear as a tiny bell. The happy people float along in a delicious languor, feasting their eyes upon the doubled beauty of the landscape near the shore, where the line dividing the reality from its reflection cannot be discerned.

Beneath them are constantly changing pictures no less lovely, the marvellous surfaces of the living coral with all its wealth of tinted anemones and brilliantly-decked fish of all shapes and all hues. Carried by the imperceptible current, they pass swiftly, silently, from scene to scene, over depths so profound that the waters are almost blue-black, and as suddenly coming upon a submarine grove of rigid coral trees, whose topmost branches nearly break through the placid surface.

Presently the sun is gone, and the tender veil of night comes creeping up from the East. Already the Evening Star, like a minute moon, is sending a long thread of silver over the purpling sea. Beneath the waters the sea-folk have begun their nightly illumination, and overhead are peeping out, one by one, the vedettes of the night. Bird and beast and fish have ceased their play, and a gentle wind arises. The canoes glide shoreward noiselessly, and the voyagers seek through scented pathways their leafy homes.

* * * * *

“Poor fellow, you look a bit stale and overworked! You ought to run down to the seaside for a week!”

And the suddenly-awakened clerk starts up, muttering a half-intelligible apology to his employer, who stands regarding him with a look of pity. But for a few fleeting moments he has been perfectly happy.

SOCIABLE FISH

In one of the most charming chapters of that truly charming book, Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne,” the gentle author tells of some strange instances of sociability among the denizens of the farmyard, a craving for companionship that brought into intimate acquaintanceship such widely differing animals as a horse and a hen, a doe and some cattle. This, as a proof that loneliness is an abnormal condition of life even among the lesser intelligences of creation, “gives to think,” as our neighbours say; but probably few people would imagine that the same desire for society obtains even among the inhabitants of the deep and wide sea.

I do not now speak of such gregarious fish as compose the great shoals that beneficently visit the shallower waters washing populous countries, from whose innumerable multitudes whole nations may be fed without making any appreciable diminution in their apparently infinite numbers; but of those more varied and widely scattered species that are to be found near the sea-surface all over the ocean. In the ordinary routine of modern passenger traffic no observation of these truly deep-sea fish is possible, for, in the first place, the breathless panting of the propeller fills them with dread of the swiftly-gliding monster whose approach it heralds; and in the next, the would-be observer has no time to catch even a glimpse of the inhabitants of that teeming world beneath him with, perhaps, the exception of a rapidly-passing school of porpoises or the hurried vision of a sea-shouldering whale.

No, for the deliberate observation necessary in order to know something of the sea-people a sailing-ship must be chosen, the slower the better, one wherein may be felt to its fullest extent by the mindless, sightless passenger the “intolerable tedium of a long voyage.” In such a ship as this the student of marine natural history, provided he be not responsible to stern owners for the length of his passage, will welcome with great delight the solemn hush of the calm, when the windless dome above him is filled with perfect peace, and the shining circle upon which he floats is like the pupil of God’s eye. Then, leaning over the taffrail, looking earnestly down into the crystalline blue, you may see the bottom of the ship without visible support as if poised in a sky of deeper blue and more limpid atmosphere. The parasitic life that has already attached itself to the vessel is all busy living. Barnacles with their long, glutinous feet-stalks waving in imperceptible motion, are expanding from between their shells delicate fringes of brown, that, all eyes to see and hands to hold, allow nothing that can feed them to pass them by. And as they flex themselves inward with the supplies they have drawn from the apparently barren water, you can fancy that the pearly whiteness of the shells gleams with a brighter lustre as of satisfaction. The dull-hued limpets, like pustules breaking out upon the ship’s sheathing, may also be discerned, but less easily, because they have such a neutral tint, and love to nestle amongst a tangle of dank, deep-green sea-moss, that, except where the light from above breaks obliquely down upon it, looks almost black.

But a little patient watching will reveal a set of tiny arms forth-darting from the irregular opening in the apex of each limpet-cone. They, too, are busy continually, arresting every morsel, invisible to feeble human sight, that comes within their reach, and passing it within for the up-keep of the compact, self-contained residence. And there, can it be possible, at all this distance from land? It is not only possible but undeniable that there is a _crab_, an impudent, inquisitive little tangle of prying claws surrounding a disc about the size of a shilling. He strolls about in leisurely fashion, but making a track at all sorts of angles, among the living fixtures, skirting each barnacle or limpet with a ludicrous air of contempt, as it seems. You can almost imagine him saying: “I never saw such a lot of dead-an’-alive ornaments in my life. Say! how d’you like stoppin’ in the same old spot for ever an’ ever?” But, impervious to his rudeness, the busy creatures never cease their one set of movements, utterly ignoring his very existence. You cannot help but wonder what becomes of that little crab when the ship begins to move, for you know that he can’t possibly hold on against the tremendous brushing past of the water. He isn’t built for that.

The other parasites, whether animal or vegetable, have, you notice, been busy for who shall say how long adapting themselves to every condition of their dependent life, so that now, whatever motion be made by the ship, they present to the onrush of the water just the right angle of surface that will allow it to slip over them easily, while at the same time they are always in a position to levy contributions. There is a puzzling lead-coloured streak along the copper near the keel to which your eye returns again and again, for although it will persist in looking like a place whence a strip of sheathing has been torn, there is yet a suggestion of quivering life about it which is certainly not the tremulous outline given to every inanimate object under water. Suddenly your doubts are set at rest--the mystery is solved. The steward has cast over the side some fragments of food that settle slowly downwards, turning over and over as they sink and catching the diffused light at every point, so that they sparkle like gems. As they pass the almost motionless keel the leaden-looking streak suddenly detaches itself, and, almost startlingly revealed as a graceful fish, intercepts and swallows those morsels one after the other. You fetch a few more fragments, and, dropping them one by one, entice your new acquaintance nearer the surface, so that you may admire the easy grace of every movement, and study at your leisure the result of this creature’s development along certain lines of inventiveness.

It is a _Remora_, or “sucker,” a species of shark that never exceed a dozen pounds in weight. Having all the shark’s usual qualities of slothfulness, voracity, and timorousness, it is prevented from becoming ferocious also by its limitations of size and the feebleness of its teeth. And as it would be hopeless for it to attempt to prey upon other fish while they are alive, from its lack of the requisite speed as well as from the scarcity of fish of sufficiently small size in the deep waters which are its abiding-place, it has developed a parasitic habit, which saves it a whole world of trouble by insuring its protection, economising exertion, and keeping it in the midst of a plentiful food-supply. All these objects are attained in the simplest manner possible, aided by an unfailing instinct guiding the creature in its selection of an involuntary host.

On the top of its head, which is perfectly flat, it has developed an arrangement which has, perhaps, the most artificial appearance of anything found in animated Nature. It is in plan an oblong oval, with a line running along its middle, to which other diagonal lines, perfectly parallel to each other, extend from the outer edge. The whole thing is curiously like the non-slipping tread moulded upon the soles of many lawn-tennis shoes. This strangely patterned contrivance is really an adhesive attachment of such strength that, when by its means the fish is holding on to any plane surface, it is impossible to drag the body away, except by almost tearing the fish in half. Yet by the flexing of some simple muscles the fish can release its body instantly, or as instantly re-attach itself. Of course, it always adheres to its host with its head pointing in the same direction as the host usually travels, because in that manner the pressure of the water assists the grip of the sucker and keeps the whole body lying flatly close to whatever is carrying it along. In this position it can perform all the natural functions. Its wide mouth gapes; its eyes, set one on either side of its flattened head, take in a most comprehensive view of the prospect, so that nothing having the appearance of edibility can pass that way without being seen and, if the speed of its host admits, immediately investigated. Thus its sociability is obviously of the most selfish kind. It sticketh closer than a brother, but affection for its protecting companion forms no part of its programme. Its number is, emphatically, One.

I have used the word “host” intentionally, because the remora does not by any means limit its company to ships. It is exceedingly fond of attaching itself to the body of a whale, and also to some of the larger sharks. Indeed, it goes a step further than mere outward attachment in the latter case, because well-authenticated instances are recorded where several suckers have been found clinging to a huge shark’s palate. This is another stage on the way to perfect parasitism, because under such circumstances these daring lodgers needed not to detach themselves any more. They had only to intercept sufficient food for their wants on its way from the front door to the interior departments. I have also seen them clinging to the jaw of a sperm whale, but that jaw was not in working order. It was bent outwards at right angles to the body, and afforded harbourage to a most comprehensive collection of parasites, barnacles especially, giving the front elevation of that whale an appearance utterly unlike anything with life.

But John Chinaman has outwitted the superlatively lazy remora. By what one must regard as a triumph of ingenuity he has succeeded in converting the very means whereby this born-tired fish usually escapes all necessity for energy into an instrument for obtaining gain for other people. The mode is as follows: First catch your remora. No difficulty here. A hook and line of the simplest, a bait of almost anything that looks eatable lowered by the side of a ship, and if there be a sucker hidden there he will be after the lure instantly. The only skill necessary is to haul him up swiftly when he bites, because if he be allowed to get hold of the ship again you may pull the hook out of his jaws, but you will not succeed in detaching him. Having caught a remora, the fisherman fastens a brass ring closely round its body, just at its smallest part before the spread of the tail. To this he attaches a long, fine, and strong line. He then departs for the turtle grounds with his prisoner. Arriving there he confines himself to keeping the remora away from the bottom of his boat by means of a bamboo. Of course the captive gets very tired, and no turtle can pass within range of him without his hanging on to that turtle for a rest. The moment he does so the turtle’s fate is sealed. Struggle how he may, he cannot shake loose the tenacious grip of the sucker, and the stolid yellow man in the sampan has only to haul in upon the line to bring that unwilling turtle within range of his hands and lift him into the boat. And this ingenious utilisation of the sucker’s well-known peculiarity has also commended itself to the semi-barbarous fishermen of the East African littoral, who are not otherwise notable for either ingenuity or enterprise.

Before we dismiss the remora to his beloved rest again it is worthy of notice that he himself gives unwilling hospitality to another sociable creature. It is a little crustacean, rather like an exaggerated woodlouse, but without the same power of curling itself into a ball. It is of a pearly white colour, very sluggish in its movements, but with tenacious hooks upon its many legs it holds on securely to the inside of the sucker’s mouth near the gill-slits, being there provided with all the needs of its existence, without the slightest effort of its own. Its chief interest to naturalists lies in its strange likeness to the fossil trilobites so plentifully scattered among various geological strata.

But while you have been watching the remora a visitor from the vast openness around has arrived, as if glad of the society afforded by the ship. Yet in this case the idea seems a fond conceit, because the new-comer is only a “jelly-fish,” or “Medusa.” It is really an abuse of language to use the word “fish” in connection with such an almost impalpable entity as the Medusa, because while a fish is an animal high up the scale of the vertebrata, a Medusa is almost at the bottom of the list of created things. When floating in the sea it is an exceedingly pretty object, with its clear, mushroom-shaped disc uppermost, and long fringe of feathery filaments, sometimes delicately coloured, waving gracefully beneath with each pulsation of the whole mass. It has no power of independent locomotion, no--but, there, it is not easy to say what it _has_ got, since if you haul one up in a bucket and lay it on deck in the sun, it will melt entirely away, leaving not a trace behind except two or three tiny morsels of foreign matter which did not belong to its organism at all. Yet if one of these masses of jelly comes into contact with your bare skin it stings like a nettle, for it secretes, in some mysterious way, an acrid fluid that serves it instead of many organs possessed by further advanced creatures. As the present subject passes beneath your gaze you notice quite a little cluster of tiny fish smaller even than full-grown tittlebats, perhaps a dozen or so, who look strangely forlorn in the middle of the ocean. It may be that this sense of loneliness leads them to seek the shelter of something larger than themselves, something which will be a sort of rallying-point in such a wide world of waters.

Perhaps the lovely streamers dangling have aroused their curiosity, but, whatever the motive, you see the little group, huddled round the Medusa, popping in and out from the edge of the disc, through which you can plainly see them as they pass beneath. It is quite pretty to watch those innocent games of the sportive little fish, but presently you notice that one of them doesn’t play any more. He is entangled among those elegant fringes and hangs like a little silver streak, brightening and fading as it is turned by the pulsatory movement of the Medusa. And if you could watch it long enough you would see it gradually disappear, absorbed into the jelly-like substance by the solvent secreted by the Medusa for that purpose. Still unconscious of their companion’s fate, the other little victims continue to play in that treacherous neighbourhood, voluntarily supplying the needs of an organism immeasurably beneath them in the sum-total of all those details that go to make up conscious life.

Closely gathered about the rudder and stern-post is another group of larger fish, the several individuals being from 4 in. to 8 in. long, and most elegant in shape and colour. They evidently seek the ship for protection, for they scarcely ever leave her vicinity for more than 2 ft. or 3 ft. If one of them does dart away that distance after some, to you, imperceptible morsel of food, it is back again in a flash, sidling up to her sheathing closer than ever, as if dreadfully alarmed at its own temerity. A small hook baited with a fragment of meat will enable you to catch one if only you can get it to fall close enough to the rudder--no easy matter, because of the great overhang of the stern. In the old-fashioned ships, where the rudder-head moved in a huge cavity called the rudder-trunk, I have often caught them by dropping my hook down there, and very sweet-eating little fish they were. Sailors call them “rudder-fish,” a trivial name derived from their well-known habit, but they are really a species of “caranx,” and akin to the mackerel tribe, which has so many representatives among deep-water fish. They are, perhaps, the most sociable of all the fish that visit a ship far out at sea; but they present the same problem that the crab did a little while ago: What becomes of them when a breeze springs up and the vessel puts on speed?

I have often watched them at the beginning of a breeze, swimming steadily along by the side of the stern-post, so as to be clear of the eddies raised by the rudder; but it was always evident that a rate of over three knots would leave them astern very soon. Not less curious is the speculation as to whence they come so opportunely. There seems to be very few of them, yet an hour or two’s calm nearly always shows a little company of them cowering in their accustomed place. As you watch them wonderingly, a broad blaze of reflected light draws your attention to the splendid shape of a dolphin gliding past and exposing the silver shield of his side to the sun’s rays, which radiate from it with an almost unbearable glare. At that instant every one of the little fish beneath you gather into one compact bunch, so close to the stern-post that they look as if part of it. When they can no longer keep up with the ship’s protecting bulk how do they escape the jaws of such beautiful ravenous monsters as that which has just passed? The swift flying-fish cannot do so, even with the swallow-like speed that he possesses and the power of skimming through the air for a thousand yards at a flight. What chance, then, can our shrinking little companions possibly have, or how do they survive amidst so many enemies? It is an unsolvable mystery.

What is this cold grey shadow stealing along through the bright blue water by the keel? A shark, and a big one too. No one doubts the reason for _his_ sociability; in fact, he (or she) is credited by most sailors with a most uncanny knowledge of what is going on aboard any ship he chooses to honour with his company. We need not be so foolish as to believe any of these childish stories, especially when the obvious explanation lies so closely on the surface. Heredity accounts for a great many things that have long been credited with supernatural origins, and the shark’s attachment to the society of ships is so plainly hereditary that the slightest thought upon the subject will convince any unbiased person of the reasonableness of the explanation. For many generations the shark, born scavenger that he is, has learned to associate the huge shadow cast by a ship with food, not perhaps in such mountainous abundance as that provided by the carcass of a dead whale, but still scattering savoury morsels at fairly regular intervals. From its earliest days--when, darting in and out of its mother’s capacious jaws, it has shared in the spoil descending from passing ships--to the end of what is often a very long life, ships and food are inseparably associated in whatever answers to its mind in the shark. Man, alive or dead, always makes a welcome change of diet to a fish that, by reason of his build, is unable to prey upon other fish as do the rest of his neighbours.

As I have said elsewhere, the shark eats man because man is easy to catch, not because he likes man’s flesh better than any other form of food, as many landsmen and even sailors believe. But the shark is only able to gratify his sociable instincts in calms or very light airs. He is far too slothful, too constitutionally averse to exertion, to expend his energies in the endeavour to keep up with a ship going at even a moderate rate of speed. Let the wind drop, however, and in few parts of the sea will you be without a visit from a shark for many hours. In one vessel that I sailed in the skipper had such a delicate nose that he could not bear the stench of the water in which the day’s allowance of salt meat had been steeped to get some of the pickle out of it. So he ordered a strong net to be made of small rope, and into this the meat was put, the net secured to a stout line, and hung over the stern just low enough to dip every time the vessel curtsied. The plan answered admirably for some time, until one night the wind fell to a calm, and presently the man at the wheel heard a great splash behind him. He rushed to the taffrail and looked over, just in time to see the darkness beneath all aglow with phosphorescence, showing that some unusual agitation had recently taken place. He ran to the net-lanyard, and, taking a good pull, fell backward on deck, for there was nothing fast to it. Net and meat were gone. The skipper was much vexed, of course, that the net hadn’t been hauled up a little higher when it fell calm, for, as he told the mate, anybody ought to know that 30 lbs. of salt pork dangling overboard in a calm was enough to call a shark up from a hundred miles away.

As this particular shark, now sliding stealthily along the keel towards the stern, becomes more clearly visible, you notice what looks at first like a bright blue patch on top of his head. But, strange to say, it is not fixed; it shifts from side to side, backwards and forwards, until, as the big fish rises higher, you make it out to be the pretty little caranx that shares with the crocodile and buffalo birds the reputation of being the closest possible companion and chum of so strangely diverse an animal to himself. And now we are on debatable ground, for this question of the sociability of the pilot-fish with the shark has been most hotly argued. And perhaps, like the cognate question of the flight of flying-fish, it is too much to hope that any amount of first-hand testimony will avail to settle it now. Still, if a man will but honestly state what he has _seen_, not once, but many times repeated, his evidence ought to have some weight in the settlement of even the most vexed questions. Does the pilot-fish love the shark? Does it even know that the shark _is_ a shark, a slow, short-sighted, undiscriminating creature whose chief characteristic is that of never-satisfied hunger? In short, does the pilot-fish attach itself to the shark as a pilot, with a definite object in view, or is the attachment merely the result of accident? Let us see.

Here is a big shark-hook, upon which we stick a mass of fat pork two or three pounds in weight. Fastening a stout rope to it, we drop it over the stern with a splash. The eddies have no sooner smoothed away than we see the brilliant little blue and gold pilot-fish coming towards our bait at such speed that we can hardly detect the lateral vibrations of his tail. Round and round the bait he goes, evidently in a high state of excitement, and next moment he has darted off again as rapidly as he came. He reaches the shark, touches him with his head on the nose, and comes whizzing back again to the bait, followed sedately by the dull-coloured monster. As if impatient of his huge companion’s slowness he keeps oscillating between him and the bait until the shark has reached it and, without hesitation, has turned upon his back to seize it, if such a verb can be used to denote the deliberate way in which that gaping crescent of a mouth enfolds the lump of pork. Nothing, you think, can increase the excitement of the little attendant now. He seems ubiquitous, flashing all round the shark’s jaws as if there were twenty of him at least. But when half-a-dozen men, “tailing on” to the rope, drag the shark slowly upward out of the sea, the faithful little pilot seems to go frantic with--what shall we call it?--dread of losing his protector, affection, anger, who can tell?

The fact remains that during the whole time occupied in hauling the huge writhing carcass of the shark up out of the water the pilot-fish never ceases its distracted upward leaping against the body of its departing companion. And after the shark has been hauled quite clear of the water the bereaved pilot darts disconsolately to and fro about the rudder as if in utter bewilderment at its great loss. For as long as the calm continues, or until another shark makes his or her appearance, that faithful little fish will still hover around, every splash made in the water bringing it at top speed to the spot as if it thought that its friend had just returned.

No doubt there is a mutual benefit in the undoubted alliance between pilot-fish and shark, for I have seen a pilot-fish take refuge, along with a female shark’s tiny brood, within the parent’s mouth at the approach of a school of predatory fish, while it is only reasonable to suppose, what has often been proved to be the fact, that in guiding the shark to food the pilot also has its modest share of the feast. It is quite true that the pilot-fish will for a time attach itself to a boat when its companion has been killed. Again and again I have noticed this on a whaling voyage, where more sharks are killed in one day while cutting in a whale than many sailors see during their whole lives.

Hitherto we have only considered those inhabitants of the deep sea that forgather with a ship during a calm. Not that the enumeration of them is exhausted, by any means, for during long-persisting calms, as I have often recorded elsewhere, many queer denizens of the middle depths of ocean are tempted by the general stagnation to come gradually to the surface and visit the unfamiliar light. Considerations of space preclude my dealing with many of these infrequent visitors to the upper strata of the sea, but I cannot refrain from mention of one or two that have come under my notice at different times. One especially I tried for two days to inveigle by various means, for I thought (and still think) that a stranger fish was never bottled in any museum than he was. He was sociable enough, too. I dare say his peculiar appearance was dead against his scraping an acquaintance with any ordinary-looking fish, who, in spite of their well-known curiosity, might well be excused from chumming up with any such “sport” as he undoubtedly was. He was about 18 in. long, with a head much like a gurnard and a tapering body resembling closely in its contour that of a cod. So that as far as his shape went there was nothing particularly _outré_ in his appearance. But he was bright green in colour--at least, the ground of his colour-scheme was bright green. He was dotted profusely with glaring crimson spots about the size of a sixpence. And from the centre of each of these spots sprang a brilliant blue tassel upon a yellow stalk about an inch long. All his fins--and he had certainly double the usual allowance--were also fringed extensively with blue filaments, which kept fluttering and waving continually, even when he lay perfectly motionless, as if they were all nerves. His tail was a wonderful organ more than twice as large as his size warranted, and fringed, of course, as all his other fins were, only more so. His eyes were very large and inexpressive, dead-looking in fact, reminding me of eyes that had been boiled. But over each of them protruded a sort of horn of bright yellow colour for about two inches, at the end of which dangled a copious tassel of blue that seemed to obscure the uncanny creature’s vision completely.

To crown all, a dorsal ridge of crimson rose quite two inches, the whole length of his back being finished off by a long spike that stuck out over his nose like a jibboom, and had the largest tassel of all depending from it. So curiously decorated a fish surely never greeted man’s eye before, and when he moved, which he did with dignified slowness, the effect of all those waving fringes and tassels was dazzling beyond expression. I think he must have been some distant relation of the angler-fish that frequents certain tidal rivers, but he had utilised his leisure for personal decoration upon original lines. This was in the Indian Ocean, near the Line; but some years after, in hauling up a mass of Gulf weed in the North Atlantic, I caught, quite by accident, a tiny fish, not two inches long, that strongly reminded me of my tasselled friend, and may have been one of the same species. I tried to preserve the little fellow in a bottle, but had no spirit, and he didn’t keep in salt water.