Again, one reads so much about sea-birds hovering in the air, and ready to pounce upon the poor fish, as soon as they issue from the waves. However, though I have made three sea voyages—one in a sailing-ship—I have never had the luck to see this; from which I gather that there is at least a good deal of respite from this evil, to which, moreover, other fishes are subject—for whether in air or water, what matters it? No doubt, however, but that the Exocetus volitans—to give it its Latin name—is ardently pursued, and eaten, as it deserves to be, with the greatest relish. That its fins have been developed into wings, for the express purpose of escaping from such pursuit, is equally probable; and therefore it would be very strange if they did not often enable it to do so. A good evidence of their efficacy is, I think, the enormous abundance of the species possessing them; so that perhaps, on the whole, these creatures of two elements, on whom so much pity has been bestowed, have a better, instead of a worse, time than the majority of their fellows.

The most curious thing I know about the flying-fish is that naturalists will keep on pretending that it can’t fly. However, we must not be led astray by this, but go by the name and what our gallant seamen tell us. Also we should remember this, that a sailor, when he sees a fish flying, or anything curious, is a free man, whereas a naturalist, under similar circumstances, has his hands more or less tied by a sort of professional etiquette, which requires that he should not let an animal be more interesting than he can help, or give in to any picturesque fact, unless it can be stated in a dull kind of way. The facility with which, in able hands, this compromise may be effected, has led to many tardy admissions; but exceptional cases arise, and this, perhaps, may be one of them. For here is the tropic sea, blue as a sapphire, gleaming like a diamond, glancing and throbbing with such jewels of light that it looks as though thousands of silver fishes were jumping in the meshes of a golden net, flung down by the sun from the sky. All at once, from amidst these myriads of sparkles a number flash higher, leap into the air, and fly, like bright arrows, towards you. Onwards they come, and from being light only, they pass into form and substance, begin to live, to move with sense and volition, and, all at once, they are fishes, flying with wings over their home of the sea. They sink towards the water, rise again, sink, rise, then dip for one moment, and, the next, go glittering up into the air, and come spinning round in a curve. Thus they gleam on for a most astonishing distance, till, near you, they disappear into the sea, or, far away, become again the sparkling jewels of the sun. And all around, over the great, wide sea, these showers of living gems are leaping in and out of it. It is a most beautiful sight. The body of the fish is of a light, gleaming blue, and the delicate film-like wings, springing from just behind the gills, and extending backwards almost to the tail, set it, as they rapidly quiver, in a soft and silvery haze.

It is, of course, the pectoral fins that thus perform the office of wings, and by moving them and steering a course, their owner flies as truly, for the time, as does either a bird or a bat. Those who deny this—the naturalists aforesaid—say that the flying-fish never go for a greater distance, without touching the water, than the initial impetus of their leap out of it carries them to. Now the swim-bladder of the flying-fish is so large that when the creature distends it, as it has the power to do, it occupies almost the whole cavity of the body, which thus becomes full of air, and, besides this, it has another sort of bladder in its mouth, which it can inflate through the gills. Thus it is all air, and everybody knows how difficult it is to throw a light, bladdery thing to any distance—a stone goes much farther. What sort of impetus must that be, which can, in this instance, throw it to 500 or 1,000 yards, and is it not more likely that a small fish (it is only about a foot long), whose fins have become developed so as to support it in the air, and whose body has been turned into an air-sac, should have been enabled to fly, rather than leap, these wonderful distances? When I first saw flying-fish myself, I felt quite angry at the nonsense I had been made to believe about them, through the natural history books, and from that moment I resolved that I would be as cautious in trusting to what are called sober statements, as to statements that may seem to be exaggerated. Certainly it is the sailors, here, and not the scientists, who best know what they are talking about, and so, as they have seen a great deal more of flying-fish than I have, instead of repeating my own opinion, I will end the subject, and this chapter, with that of one who, to all the advantages of a sailor, adds those of being a careful observer and a very picturesque writer. At any rate, I don’t see how he can have been mistaken in such matters as these, and, if not, there ought to be an end, at last, of that long-enduring fallacy that the flying-fish cannot fly.

Mr. Bullen then—and I quote him as an authority—says at page 188 of his Idylls of the Sea: “As the result of personal observation extending over a good many years, I assert that the Exocetus does fly. I have often seen a flying-fish rise two hundred yards off, describe a semicircle, and, meeting the ship, rise twenty feet in the air perpendicularly, at the same time darting off at right angles to its previous course. Then, after another long flight, when just about to enter the water, the gaping jaws of a dolphin gave it pause and it rose again, returning, almost directly, upon its former course. This procedure is so common that it is a marvel it has not been more widely noticed. A flying-fish of mature size can fly a thousand yards. It does not flap its fins as a bird, but they vibrate like the wings of an insect, with a distinct hum. The only thing which terminates its flight involuntarily is the drying of its fin-membranes and their consequent stiffening.”

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SEA-SERPENT—MANY OCCASIONS ON WHICH IT HAS BEEN SEEN—CONSCIENTIOUS SCEPTICISM OF SCIENTIFIC MEN—A FIGHT BETWEEN MONSTERS—THE LARGEST LAND-SERPENT—SNAKES AND SNAKE-STONES—MEDICAL EVIDENCE—A COLONIAL REMEDY.

It used to be thought that the great whales—the cachalot, the rorqual, and the Greenland whale—were the largest of ocean’s dwellers, but if evidence is of any value whatever, there is one marine creature that is larger even than they—indeed, so much larger and more powerful that he is able to make them his prey, conquering them—even the mighty sperm-whale himself—by main strength put forth in single combat. This portentous monster is, of course, the great sea-serpent, which has been seen, at intervals, probably from time immemorial, and recorded also from, at least, as far back as 1734. In 1740 we have Bishop Pontoppidan’s word for its appearance—and we know now that he was right about the kraken—who describes it as having a length of 600 feet; and in 1822 it was again seen off Norway, and again it was 600 feet long; so, perhaps, it was the same one.

Then, in 1829, there is a description of such a creature, seen in the Indian seas, which tallies, on the whole, with the later joint account of Captain McQuhæ and Lieutenant Drummond, of H.M.S. Dædalus, in 1848. Captain McQuhæ describes the creature that he saw, as an “enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about four feet constantly above the surface of the sea,” and “as nearly,” he says, “as we could approximate, by comparing it with the length of what our maintopsail yard would show in the water, there was, at the very least, sixty feet of the animal à fleur d’eau, no portion of which was, to our perception, used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulations. There seemed to be as much as thirty or forty feet of tail, as well.” This great serpent, which, however, by this computation, would not have been so large as the largest whales, “passed the ship rapidly, but so close under our lee-quarter, that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should easily have recognised his features with the naked eye. It had no fins, but there was something like the mane of a horse, or, rather, a bunch of seaweed, washing about its back.” It swam at about the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and was in sight for a full twenty minutes. Lieutenant Drummond thought the creature looked more like an eel than a snake. It had, he thought, “a back fin ten feet long, and also a tail fin.” The head, too, he describes, I think, as of a somewhat different shape, and says that it was “rather raised and occasionally dipping.” Still, there is nothing in the one account that is irreconcilable with the other, nor is it often the case that two people, seeing the same thing, describe it in just the same way. The Dædalus at the time that this creature was seen, was somewhere between the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena.