To see the coral garden to advantage you must pass over it—­not through it.  Drifting idly in a boat in a calm clear day, when the tips of the tallest shrubs are submerged but a foot or so, and all the delicate filaments, which are invisible or lie flat and flaccid when the tide is out, are waving, twisting and twining, then the spectacle is at its best.  Tiny fish, glowing like jewels, flash and dart among the intricate, interlacing branches, or quiveringly poise about some slender point—­humming-birds of the sea, sipping their nectar.  A pink translucent fish no greater than a lead-pencil wriggles in and out of the lemon-coloured coral.  Another of the John Dory shape, but scarcely an inch long, blue as a sapphire with gold fins and gold-tipped tail, hovers over a miniature blue-black cave.  A shoal darts out, some all old-gold, some green with yellow damascene tracery and long yellow filaments floating from the lower lip.  A slender form, half coral pink, half grey, that might swim in a walnut shell, displays its transparent charms.  Conspicuous, daring colours here are as common as on the lawn of a race course.  Occasionally on the edge of a reef there comes the fish of frosted silver, with hair like purple streamers floating from the dorsal fin a foot and more behind.  Some call it the “lady” fish, because of its beauty and grace, and others the diamond trevally (ALECTIS CILIARIS).  More frequently is seen “the sleepy fish,” salmon-shaped, of resplendent copper, with bright blue blotches and markings, which remains motionless in the water, and so often awakens not until the spear of the hungry black is fast in its shoulders.

Another handsome creature of olive green with blue wavy stripes and spots (FISTULARIS serratus) has the shape of a gar-fish, and to counterbalance a long tubular snout, a slender filament resembling the bare feather shaft of some bird of paradise extending from the tail.

With all its fantastic beauty a coral reef is cruel.  Nearer the shore the stony blocks are overspread by masses of that singular skeleton-less coral, known as alcyonaria—­partaking of the nature of rubber and of leather—­an ugly, repulsive, tyrannous growth, over-running and killing other and more delicate corals, as undesirable pests crowd out useful and becoming vegetation.  It occurs in varying colours and forms—­sickly green and grey, bronze and yellow, brown and pink.  Loathsome, resembling offal in some aspects as the receding tide lays it bare, it becomes pretty and interesting when covered with calm, limpid water, and its dull life flourishes with star-like, living flowers.