"The moray?" echoed Colin thoughtfully. "Seems to me I've heard about that fish somewhere. Isn't it green? It's called the green moray?"
"Yes, sir; that's the fish. But there's more spotted morays around than green ones."
"But that's hardly more a fish than a shark is," objected Colin. "Isn't a moray a kind of eel?"
"Yes, sir, but an eel's a fish. Leastways so I was always told, when I used to work over at the Aquarium on Agar's Island."
"All right," said Colin good-humoredly, "I guess you're in the right about it. Go ahead and tell me about the moray."
"I was just sayin', sir, that they were the only ugly things around Bermuda. And they stay quite a bit from shore out around the coral atolls. You see lots of 'em around the sea-gardens. They 'ides in 'oles of the rocks and strikes out at other fishes like a snake. I knew a diver once, who was goin' down after specimens from one of the sea-garden boats, and was nearly drowned."
"How?" queried Colin a little incredulously. "The moray couldn't bite through the diving-bell."
"No, sir,—no, sir,—not through the diving-bell. But the india-rubber tube that put air into the 'elmet came swingin' past a 'ole in a rock in which a six-foot moray was waitin' for anything that might come along, and 'e darted out at it."
"Did he bite it through?" cried Colin.