ht as Venus gave, over the slippery rocks, and
then, cautiously enough, past the Manchineel {107} bush, a broken
sprig of which would have raised an instant blister on the face or
hand.

Our night, as often happens in the Tropics, was not altogether
undisturbed; for, shortly after I had become unconscious of the
chorus of toads and cicadas, my hammock came down by the head. Then
I was woke by a sudden bark close outside, exactly like that of a
clicketting fox; but as the dogs did not reply or give chase, I
presumed it to be the cry of a bird, possibly a little owl. Next
there rushed down the mountain a storm of wind and rain, which made
the coco-leaves flap and creak, and rattle against the gable of the
house; and set every door and window banging, till they were caught
and brought to reason. And between the howls of the wind I became
aware of a strange noise from seaward--a booming, or rather humming
most like that which a locomotive sometimes makes when blowing off
steam. It was faint and distant, but deep and strong enough to set
one guessing its cause. The sea beating into caves seemed, at
first, the simplest answer. But the water was so still on our side
of the island, that I could barely hear the lap of the ripple on the
shingle twenty yards off; and the nearest surf was a mile or two
away, over a mountain a thousand feet high. So puzzling vainly, I
fell asleep, to awake, in the gray dawn, to the prettiest idyllic
picture, through the half-open door, of two kids dancing on a stone
at the foot of a coconut tree, with a background of sea and dark
rocks.

As we went to bathe we heard again, in perfect calm, the same
mysterious booming sound, and were assured by those who ought to
have known, that it came from under the water, and was most probably
made by none other than the famous musical or drum fish; of whom one
had heard, and hardly believed, much in past years.

Mr. Joseph, author of the History of Trinidad from which I have so
often quoted, reports that the first time he heard this singular
fish was on board a schooner, at anchor off Chaguaramas.

'Immediately under the vessel I heard a deep and not unpleasant
sound, similar to those one might imagine to proceed from a thousand
AEolian harps; this ceased, and deep twanging notes succeeded; these
gradually swelled into an uninterrupted stream of singular sounds
like the booming of a number of Chinese gongs under the