The manatee, being fatigued, had sunk to the bottom, and lay there. We now paddled carefully up, and Blue Peter caught the staff, and began to pull upon the line. Immediately that the wounded creature felt the smart, it started again. I saw the line vibrate and stretch out in a direction abeam of the canoe; but, in a moment, Jack, who held the steering-paddle, swept the bows round in the direction taken by the manatee, while Blue Peter fastened the line to the prow of the canoe. There was a jerk or two, though not so much as I expected, and straightway we began to move ahead, Peter crouching in the bows, signing to Jack how to steer. For near a quarter of an hour did the wounded beast drag us through the water, sometimes so swiftly that the foam whizzed past us—anon changing his course so suddenly, that had not the canoe been steered with perfect skill, he would have dragged us under water. Then, his strength beginning to ebb from him fast, we hauled upon the line, and gradually closed with our prey, whose blood was now reddening the water. I pitied the poor creature, as he put his head above the surface, and grunted and moaned after his fashion, but he was soon out of his pain. Slipping alongside of the carcass, Blue Peter passed his long knife around its throat, and after one or two struggles and plunges, the manatee turned over upon its back, dead. We towed him ashore, and securing him to a tree, presently paddled off in search of more game of the same sort. But upon the whole, I better loved our fishing expeditions than the hunt of the manatee. The poor defenceless brute always inspired me with pity. There is a meekness about his face which moves one. He makes no attempt to turn to bay or show fight, but is slaughtered as unresistingly as a calf, and the haunts he loves are the muddy and unwholesome canals among the mangrove swamps. But in spearing fish we often rowed down the bay to the rocky points and ledges of reef which formed the outermost horns of the lagoon. There the clear, blue sea, white spangled by the merry strength of the sea-breeze, stretched illimitably out, and the everlasting surf flung aloft its clouds of sparkling spray, high up among the rocks, now and then giving the bushes a taste of the savour of brine. It was in the still pools and channels, formed by breakwaters of rock, that the canoe was then navigated. Let the sea-breeze be blowing, and the surging swells be tossing in, as hard and fast as they might, there was always calm water behind the reefs—so calm and so clear! I might think that I was looking into the swirlings of our trout-pool in the Balwearie Burn, but for the bright, jagged coral, and the strange sea-weeds at the bottom, and the still stranger fishes floating, as it were, in pure mid air, but a fathom down beneath the keel of the canoe. Gliding over these translucent waters, sometimes scraping the battered side of our skiff against the rough coral edges; sometimes receiving a