djutors were inexperienced, and perhaps his own courage
was of that saccharine character that gets oozy and slushy in moist
perils. When descending with his leaded boots on the dark green
outline of sea mosses that in the clear Gulf invested the vessel in a
verdurous coat, by some mistake he was let down with a slip, and went
hurtling through the rotten planks, losing his holy water and sending
his witch's wand--well, to its original owner. He crushed through,
and the infinite dust of infusoriae and diatomaceae choked his vision.
The _Teredo navalis_, whose labors are so destructive in southern
seas, had perforated the old hulk, and converted the vessel into a
spongy mass of wood, clay and lime. Innumerable algae and curious
fungi of the sea, hydroids, delicate-frost formed emerald plumuluria
and campanuluna, bryozoa, mollusks, barnacles and varieties of coral
had used it as a builder's quarry and granary. As the geologist finds
atom by atom of an organism converted into a stony counterfeit, these
busy existences had preserved the vessel's shape, but converted the
woody fibre to their own uses. He could see nothing at first but a
mixture of green and ochreous dust, through which tiny electric fires
went quivering and shaking. In the confusion he lost the signal line,
and had no way of making his condition known. Plunging about as the
sea dust began to settle, and already more intent on finding the
life-line and getting out of that than of securing Lafitte's gold,
he observed some spectators not pleasant to look upon. A lobster or a
crab is much pleasanter upon the table than in the sea, and there were
other things he knew, and some he believed, might not take his hasty
visit pleasantly. There was the horseshoe-fish with ugly strings
hanging from his base, disagreeable arachnides, strange star fish and
their parasites, and, curiously, a large wolfish fish that had built
a nest and was watching it and him--watching him with no agreeable
or timid expression in its angry eyes. He was just expecting Victor
Hugo's devil fish to complete his horror when a sudden, sharp,
bone-breaking shock struck him from an electrical eel or marine
torpedo. This was a real and sensible danger, and as he struggled to
ascend the hulk to the rotten half-deck, the spongy substance
gave way, the treacherous quicksand, with its smooth, tenacious
throat-clutch, slid down and caught him. The danger was real and
imminent, when his companions above, obs