g, hearing, or trying to learn something.
Thus I knew almost every rock and cranny round the island, as I was
always poking and ogling into odd crannies and pools to see what I could
discover. Among my favourite places was the Fauconnaire, which being
surrounded at every tide, was always having fresh life and vegetation
brought to it by the ever-moving sea.

There were many pools and wonderful little caves round this curious,
conical island, of which I knew, and into whose recesses I loved to pry;
and although I visited them frequently they seemed ever new to me.

There was, facing due east, a large mass of rock near the foot of the
Fauconnaire, upon which I often sat on a calm day, looking down into the
mysteries of the sea. The water was so wonderfully clear, that at a
depth of twenty feet I could see every pebble and bunch of weed as
plainly as if only a sheet of glass hid them from view. This was to me
very remarkable, as on the sandy east coast of England, an object two or
three feet beneath the surface is hidden from the eye by the
discolouration of the water, caused by the sand and soft clay cliffs.
Here I could look down at one of the most lovely gardens the eye of man
ever rested upon.

It was a wonderfully diversified collection of marine plants of all
sizes, shapes, and colours; in fact, a perfect marine paradise. The
colours embraced every hue of green, from the pale tint of a cut
cucumber to the darkest shade of bronze, merging upon blackness. The
yellow plants embraced every tint of yellow and orange imaginable, while
the pinks ran the whole gamut of shades of that colour.

The forms and sizes of this enchanting garden of flowers without
blossom were as varied as the colours. On the rocky slopes adhered tiny
anemonae; lower down were other bushy weeds growing in all forms and
positions, while further away in the deeper water rose up great feathery
fronds and waving arms, like the tentacles of some giant octopus feeling
for its prey. This bed of snake-like brown arms was a weird spot, which
only wanted a mermaid or two to make it complete; but I, as a _mere
man_, could only complete the picture by magnifying in my mind's eye the
innumerable fishes which swam in and out among the luxuriance of marine
vegetation, so as to fancy them mermaidens, and thus people this
wonderful water palace.

The fish sometimes came along in shoals, principally the spotted
rock-fish, which seemed to be painted by nature to