Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
But one morning, when he was walking out on the sand flat of the
Astillero at Mazatlan, Mexico, where he lived, he saw a big fish which
had been left by the falling tide in a little pool of water. It was a
blue-colored fish with a big bony head, and no scales, and a sleek,
slippery skin. He did not know that it was a _bagre_, but he thought
that all fishes were good to eat, so he opened his mouth and slipped
the fish, tail first, down into his pouch. It went all right for a
while, but when the fish woke up and knew he was being swallowed, he
straightened out both of his arms, and there he was. For the bagre is
a kind of catfish, and each arm is a long, stiff, sharp bone, or
spine, with a saw edge the whole length of it. And all the bagre has
to do is just to put this arm out straight and twist it at the
shoulder and then it is set, and no animal can bend or break it. And
it pierced right through the skin of the bird's sack, and the bird
could not swallow it, nor make it go up nor down, and the bagre held
on tight, for he knew that if he let go once he would be swallowed,
and that would be the last of him.
So the bird tried everything he could think of, and the fish held on,
and they kept it up all day. In the afternoon a little boy came out on
the sands. His name was Inocente, and he was the son of Ygnacio, the
fisherman of Mazatlan. And Inocente took a club of mangrove and ran up
to the struggling bird and struck it on the wing with the club. The
blow broke the wing, and the bird lay down to die, for with a broken
wing and a fish that would not go up nor down, there was no hope for
him.
When Inocente saw what kind of a fish it was, he knew just what to do.
He reached down into the bird's sack and took hold of the fish's
spines. He gave each one a twist so that it rolled over in its socket,
the upper part toward the fish's head, and then they were not stiff
any more, but lay flat against the side of the fish, just as they
ought to lie. Then the fish knew that it had found a master, and lay
perfectly still. So the bird gave a great gulp, and out the bagre went
on the sand, and when the tide came up it swam away, and took care
never to go again where a bird could get hold of it. And the bird with
the broken wing had learned something about fishes, too. But he could
not fly away, so he waited to see what the boy was going to do.
The boy took the bird into his boat and brought him home. And old
Ygnacio put a splint on his wing and covered it with salve, and by and
by it healed. But the bone was set crooked, and the bird could not fly
very well. So the boys called the bird Señor Alcatraz, which is the
Spanish for Mr. Pelican, and Señor Alcatraz and all the boys and dogs
and goats became good friends, and all ran about on the streets
together. And when the boys would shout and the dogs bark, all Señor
Alcatraz could do was to squawk and hiss and open his big mouth and
show the inside of his red fish sack.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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