were entirely due to
imaginative gossip, or they themselves were too shrewd to be drawn, for
I got nothing out of them to my purpose. They seemed to be more
interested in talking religion than the sea, and as navigators of
Biblical deep seas little visited except by professional theologians
they were remarkable. Generally speaking, indeed, piety would seem to
have taken the place of piracy among the sea-going population of Nassau;
a fact in which, no doubt, right-thinking folk will rejoice, but which
I, I am ashamed to say, found disappointing.

Those who would master the art of talking to the Nassau negro should
first brush up on their Bibles; for a pious salutation might almost be
said to be Nassau etiquette for opening a conversation. Of course, this
applies mainly to negroes or those "conchs" in whom negro blood
predominates. The average white man in Nassau must not be considered as
implicated in this statement, for he seems to take his religion much as
the average white man takes it in any other part of the world.

One afternoon, in the course of these rather fruitless if interesting
investigations among the picturesque shipyards of Bay Street, I had
wandered farther along that historic water front than is customary with
sight-seeing pedestrians; had left behind the white palm-shaded houses,
the bazaars of the sellers of tortoise-shell, the negro grog-shops and
cabins, and had come to where the road begins to be left alone with the
sea, except for a few country houses here and there among the
surrounding scrub--when my eye was caught by a little store that seemed
to have strayed away from the others--a small timber erection painted in
blue and white with a sort of sea-wildness and loneliness about it, and
with large naive lettering across its lintel announcing itself as an
"Emporium" (I think that was the word) "of Marine Curiosities."

A bladder-shaped fish, set thick with spines like a hedgehog, swung in
the breeze over the doorway, and the windows on each side of the doorway
displayed, without any attempt at arrangement, all sorts of motley
treasures of the sea: purple sea-fans; coral in every fairy shape, white
as sea-foam; conches patterned like some tessellated pavement of old
Rome; monster star-fish, sharks' teeth, pink pearls, and shells of every
imaginable convolution and iridescence, and many a weird and lovely
thing which I had not the knowledge to name; objects, indeed, familiar
enough in Nassau, but