Nat the Naturalist: A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas

by George Manville Fenn

He was in the act of doing this when Ebo began to dance about in the boat, striving hard to drag in the fish he had hooked. His plan was to haul in as quickly as he could, never giving the fish a moment’s rest, and any form of playing the swift, darting creature did not seem to enter his head.

He seemed to have found his match this time, for the fish refused to be dragged on board, but after a fierce struggle the black’s arms were too much for it, and a dozen rapid hand-over-hand hauls resulted in its being hauled over the side, a sharp-nosed glittering silver-fish about four feet long, and I was about to fling myself upon it to hold it down and stop its frantic leaps amongst our tackle, when Ebo uttered a cry of alarm, darted before me, and attacked the fish with his club, dealing it the most furious blow upon the head, but apparently without any effect, for as one of the blows fell, the great fish seemed to make a side dart with its head, and its jaws closed upon the club, holding on so fiercely and with such power that it was not until Uncle Dick had cut off its head that the club could be wrenched away, when Ebo showed me the creature’s jaws full of teeth like lancets and pretty well as sharp.

“No wonder your wire was bitten through,” said my uncle. “Hallo! is he not good to eat?”

Ebo evidently seemed to consider that it was not, for the fish was thrown over, and the fierce monster, that must have been a perfect tyrant of the waters, had not floated a dozen feet before it was furiously attacked and literally hacked to pieces.

There was no difficulty in getting fish that morning, the only thing was to avoid hooking monsters that would break or bite through our tackle, and those which were not good for food.

The reef literally swarmed with fish, some large, some small, and every now and then we could see the rapid dash of one of the snake-eels as I called them. I saw them regularly leap out of the water sometimes and come down in a knot, twisting and twining about in the most extraordinary way, and at last, so interesting was the clear, shallow water, that we laid aside our lines and leaned over the side gazing down at the fish that flashed about, till the reef was dry, and leaving Ebo in the boat we landed to walk about over the shining weeds and coral, picking our way amongst shell-fish of endless variety, some with great heavy shells a couple of feet long, and some so small and delicate that I had to handle them with the greatest delicacy to keep from crushing their tissue-papery shells.

I could have stayed there for hours and filled the boat with wonders. There was scarlet and orange coral, so beautiful that I was for bringing away specimens; but Uncle Dick showed me that it was only the gelatinous covering that was of so lovely a tint, and this, he told me, would soon decay.

Then there were the brilliantly tinted weeds. There were sea-slugs too, delicacies amongst the Chinese under the name of trepang, and so many other wonders of the sea that I should have gone on searching amongst the crevices of the sharp coral, if I had not had a sharp warning given to me to make for the boat by the parts that had only been an inch or two deep rapidly increasing to a foot, and my uncle shouting to me to come aboard.

It was quite time, for I was some distance from the boat, with the tide flowing in so rapidly that in a few minutes I should have had to swim, and a swim in water swarming with such furious kinds of the finny tribe was anything but tempting.

As it was I had to swim a few strokes, and was of course soaked, but my uncle hauled me uninjured into the boat and I little minded the wetting, but laughed at my adventure as we sat over our breakfast and feasted upon frizzled fish to our hearts’ content.