“But most likely we are the first white people who ever saw them.”
“Don’t let the raft go so quickly, Bob,” cried Carey; “we want to have a long, long look at the things now we have found them. Look, doctor; oh, do look! there was a fish glided by all of a watch-spring blue, with a great bar across it like a gold-fish’s.”
“You are missing those flowers,” said the doctor.
“No, I see them,” cried the boy, with his face close to the water. “Sea anemones; clusters of them like those I’ve seen in Cornwall, only ten times as handsome. Look there, too, lying on the patch of sand there, seven or eight, oh! and there’s one—a five-pointed one, scarlet, crimson, and orange-brown; but they don’t seem to have any feelers.”
“No; those must be star-fish—sea stars.”
“Beautiful,” cried the boy, who was half-wild with excitement. “Oh, what a pity we are going so fast! Look at all this lilac coral; why, there must be miles of it.”
“Hunderds o’ miles, sir,” growled Bostock.
“Yes, it’s very pretty to look at, and if you touch it, it feels soft as jelly outside; but it has a bad way o’ ripping holes in the bottoms of ships. Copper and iron’s nothing to it. Goes right through ’em. Ah! that coral’s sent hunderds o’ fine vessels to the bottom o’ the sea, the sea. ‘And she sank to the bottom o’ the sea.’”
The old sailor broke into song at the end of his remarks, with a portion of a stave of “The Mermaid”; but singing was not his strong point, and he made a noise partaking a good deal of a melodious croak.
“This is a famous region for coral reefs, I suppose, Bostock,” said the doctor.