ich we could have found an easy refuge; but a
stiff breeze was blowing, and the furious waves would not have allowed
a single boat to face them. Ned Land understood that, no doubt, for he
spoke not a word about it. For my part, I made no allusion to his
schemes of flight, for I would not urge him to make an attempt that
must inevitably fail. I made the time pass pleasantly by interesting
studies. During the days of April 11th and 12th, the Nautilus did not
leave the surface of the sea, and the net brought in a marvellous haul
of Zoophytes, fish and reptiles. Some zoophytes had been fished up by
the chain of the nets; they were for the most part beautiful
phyctallines, belonging to the actinidian family, and among other
species the phyctalis protexta, peculiar to that part of the ocean,
with a little cylindrical trunk, ornamented With vertical lines,
speckled with red dots, crowning a marvellous blossoming of tentacles.
As to the molluscs, they consisted of some I had already
observed--turritellas, olive porphyras, with regular lines
intercrossed, with red spots standing out plainly against the flesh;
odd pteroceras, like petrified scorpions; translucid hyaleas,
argonauts, cuttle-fish (excellent eating), and certain species of
calmars that naturalists of antiquity have classed amongst the
flying-fish, and that serve principally for bait for cod-fishing. I had
now an opportunity of studying several species of fish on these shores.
Amongst the cartilaginous ones, petromyzons-pricka, a sort of eel,
fifteen inches long, with a greenish head, violet fins, grey-blue back,
brown belly, silvered and sown with bright spots, the pupil of the eye
encircled with gold--a curious animal, that the current of the Amazon
had drawn to the sea, for they inhabit fresh waters--tuberculated
streaks, with pointed snouts, and a long loose tail, armed with a long
jagged sting; little sharks, a yard long, grey and whitish skin, and
several rows of teeth, bent back, that are generally known by the name
of pantouffles; vespertilios, a kind of red isosceles triangle, half a
yard long, to which pectorals are attached by fleshy prolongations that
make them look like bats, but that their horny appendage, situated near
the nostrils, has given them the name of sea-unicorns; lastly, some
species of balistae, the curassavian, whose spots were of a brilliant
gold colour, and the capriscus of clear violet, and with varying shades
like a pigeon's throat.

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