ond the reef. I shall never forget my surprise the first
day I saw one of these huge monsters close to me. We had been rambling
about on the reef during the morning, and were about to re-embark in our
little boat, to return home, when a loud blowing sound caused us to wheel
rapidly round. We were just in time to see a shower of spray falling,
and the flukes or tail of some monstrous fish disappear in the sea a few
hundred yards off. We waited some time to see if he would rise again. As
we stood, the sea seemed to open up at our very feet; an immense spout of
water was sent with a snort high into the air, and the huge blunt head of
a sperm whale arose before us. It was so large that it could easily have
taken our little boat, along with ourselves, into its mouth! It plunged
slowly back into the sea, like a large ship foundering, and struck the
water with its tail so forcibly as to cause a sound like a cannon shot.
We also saw a great number of flying fish, although we caught none; and
we noticed that they never flew out of the water except when followed by
their bitter foe, the dolphin, from whom they thus endeavoured to escape.
But of all the fish that we saw, none surprised us so much as those that
we used to find in shallow pools after a shower of rain; and this not on
account of their appearance, for they were ordinary-looking and very
small, but on account of their having descended in a shower of rain! We
could account for them in no other way, because the pools in which we
found these fish were quite dry before the shower, and at some distance
above high-water mark. Jack, however, suggested a cause which seemed to
me very probable. We used often to see water-spouts in the sea. A water-
spout is a whirling body of water, which rises from the sea like a sharp-
pointed pillar. After rising a good way, it is met by a long tongue,
which comes down from the clouds; and when the two have joined, they look
something like an hour-glass. The water-spout is then carried by the
wind, sometimes gently, sometimes with violence, over the sea, sometimes
up into the clouds, and then, bursting asunder, it descends in a deluge.
This often happens over the land as well as over the sea; and it
sometimes does much damage, but frequently it passes gently away. Now,
Jack thought that the little fish might perhaps have been carried up in a
water-spout, and so sent down again in a shower of rain. But we could
not be certain as t