CHAPTER IV

GARDEN OF CORAL

Brammo Bay has its garden of coral—­a border of pretty, quaint and varied growth springing up along the verge of deep water.  It is not as it used to be—­no less lovely than a flower-garden of the land.  Terrestrial storms work as much if not greater havoc in the shallow places of the sea as on the land.  Pearl-shell divers assert that ordinary “rough weather” is imperceptible at a depth of two fathoms; while ten fathoms are generally accepted as the extreme limit of wave action, however violent the surface commotion.  Yet in the shallow sea, within the Barrier Reef in times of storm and stress, not only are groves of marine plants torn and wrenched up, but huge lumps of coral rock are shattered or thrown bodily out of place and piled up on “uproarious beaches.”

A storm in March, 1903, which did scarcely any damage to vegetation ashore, destroyed most of the fantastic forms which made the coral garden enchanting.  In its commotion, too, the sea lost its purity.  The sediment and ooze of decades were churned up, and, as the agitation ceased, were precipitated—­a brown furry, slimy mud, all over the garden—­smothering the industrious polyps to whom all its prettiness was due.  Order is being restored, fresh and vigorous shoots sprouting up from the fulvid basis; but it may be many years before the damage is wholly repaired and the original beauty of the garden restored, for the “growth” of coral—­the skeletons of the polyps—­is methodical and very slow.  We speak of coral as if it were a plant, yet the reproduction is by means of eggs, and the polyp is as much an animal as a horse or an elephant.

In times past the marine garden comprised several acres in which were plants of almost every conceivable shape and form, and more or less bright and delicate in colour.  Fancy may feign shrubs, standard and clipped; elaborate bouquets, bunches of grapes, compact cauliflowers, frail red fans.  Rounded, skull-like protuberances with the convolutions of the brain exposed, stag-horns, whip-thongs yards long, masses of pink and white resembling fanciful confectionery, intricate lace-work in the deepest indigo blue, have their appointed places.  Some of the spreading plant-like growths are snow-white, tipped with mauve, lemon-coloured tipped with white, white tipped with lemon and pale blue.

On the rocks rest stalkless mushrooms, gills uppermost, which blossom as pom-pom chrysanthemums; rough nodules, boat- and canoe-shaped dishes of coral.  Adhering to the rocks are thin, flaky, brittle growths resembling vine-leaves, brown and golden-yellow; goblets and cups, tiered epergnes, distorted saucers, eccentric vases, crazily-shaped dishes.  Clams and cowries and other molluscs people the cracks and crevices of coral blocks, and congregate beneath detached masses and loose stones.  In these fervid and fecund waters life is real, life is earnest.  Here, are elaborately armoured crayfish (PALINURUS ORNATUS), upon which the most gaudy colours are lavished; grotesque crabs, fish brilliant in hue as humming-birds.  Life, darting and dashing, active and alert, crawling and slithering, slow and stationary, swarms in these marine groves.