sence, but presently swam slowly to the side of the pool and
disappeared under the coral ledge. I determined to catch and examine
the creature, and in a few minutes I discovered it resting in such a
position that I could grasp it with my hand. I did so, and seizing it
firmly by the back and belly, whipped it up out of the water, but not
before I felt several sharp pricks from its fins. Holding it so as to
study it closely, I suddenly dropped it in disgust, as strange violent
pains shot through my hand. In another two minutes they had so increased
in their intensity that I became alarmed and shouted to Viri to come
back. Certainly not more than five or ten minutes elapsed before he
was with me; to me it seemed ages, for by this time the pain was
excruciating. A look at the fish told him nothing; he had never seen
one like it before. How I managed to get back to the schooner and live
through the next five or six hours of agony I cannot tell. Twice I
fainted, and at times became delirious. The natives could do nothing for
me, but said that the pain would moderate before morning, especially if
the fish was dead. Had its fins struck into my foot instead of my hand I
should have died, they asserted; and then they told the mate and myself
that one day a mischievous boy who had speared one of these abominable
fish threw it at a young woman who was standing some distance away. It
struck her on the foot, the spines penetrating a vein, and the poor girl
died in terrible agony on the following day. By midnight the pain I
was enduring began to moderate, though my hand and arm were swollen
to double the proper size, and a splitting headache kept me awake
till daylight. The shock to the system affected me for quite a week
afterward.

During many subsequent visits to the Marshall Group our crews were
always cautioned by the people of the various islands about eating
fish or shell-fish without submitting them to local examination. In the
Radack chain of this widely spread out archipelago we found that the
lagoons were comparatively free from poisonous fish, while the Ralick
lagoons were infested with them, quite 30 per cent, being highly
dangerous at all times of the year, and nearly 50 per cent at other
seasons. Jaluit Lagoon was, and is now, notorious for its poisonous
fish. It is a curious fact that fish of a species which you may eat with
perfect safety, say, in the middle of the month, will be pronounced by
the expert natives to be