while the boatmen clave the
phosphorescent water homewards, and landed us neatly at sunset, with
their oars dripping luminous drops at every stroke, in the beautiful
harbour of Palermo.

Some days after we were still more fortunate; we had observed the scouts
with a white hood over their boat, _looking keenly down_ (_vide_ our
quotation from Theocritus) into the deep blue sea, and watching with
all-eyed attention for the apparition of some giant shadow which should
pass athwart the abyss, and give the signal for a new chase, while their
comrades were hauling in an immense miscellaneous _take_ of fish, the
acquisition of the morning. We shot the outpost, (placed to prevent
larger vessels from entering the fishing preserves and injuring the
nets,) and remarked our boatmen uncovering to a small _Madonna_ railed
in alongside. We were just in time on this occasion to see the water
enclosed in the _camera della morte_, already all alive with fish; for a
shoal of _palamide_, and of immense _pesce di moro_, filled the
reticulated chamber. They darted here and there as the net was raising,
and splashed so furiously about, that the whole water became one lather;
meanwhile, the men who had been singing gaily, now prepared their
landing-nets, shouting in a way which certainly _did_ seem to increase
the terror of their prisoners, who redoubled their efforts to escape.

The rich hues of the _palamide_, in shape and colour not unlike our
mackerel, but with longitudinal, in place of transverse, green bands,
were beautiful objects as they were raised all iridescent in their
freshness out of the water, and transferred to the side boat. We also
noticed in the net one or two immense fish, in shape like rounded
parallelograms, with tough shagreen hides, goggle eyes, and two immense
leathery fins placed at the lower part of the abdomen. They kept
flapping these valves up and down, but not offering to strike, though
lugged out by a hook. The haul was a good one, each fish worth a ducat;
and had they, in fact, been at this price converted into coin at once,
the money would have made no mean show in the bottom of the net. The
treacherous _camera della morte_ was emptied quickly, and in one minute
more, down it went again into the depths below.

We should have mentioned a singular practice of the fishermen of the
present day in Sicily, to _pat_ the thunny while he is in the net, as
you pat a horse or dog: They say it makes him docile. This don