More than one species of fish, it is said, inhabit these coral grottoes.  A compact creature with prominent rodent teeth ejects a spurt of water when its retreat is approached at low tide, while about its front and only door are strewn (after the manner of the “bones, blood and ashes” of the two giants in the valley through which Christian of the pilgrim’s progress passed) the shells of the crustaceans and molluscs it has devoured.

Stones hide creatures of forbidding but varying shape and colour—­diminutive bodies ovate and round—­brown, grey, glossy black with brown edgings, pink with grey quarterings and grey fringe, whence radiate five sprawling slender “legs,” a foot or so long.  Though doubtful in appearance, more in consonance with the creepy imagery of a nightmare than a reality of the better day, these are merely the shy and innocent brittle stars.  They are endowed with such exquisitive sensitiveness that to evade capture they sacrifice, apparently without a pang, their wriggling legs piece by piece, and each piece, large or small, squirms and wriggles.  The poet says that when the legs of one of the heroes of “The Chevy Chase” were smitten off, “he fought upon their stumps!” The voluntary dismemberment of the brittle star may be even more pitiful—­in fact almost complete, yet it still strives to pack away its forlorn body in some crevice or hollow of the coral rock.  It has been asserted that no one has ever captured by hand a brittle star perfect in all its members.  “One baffled collector,” said a highly entertaining London journal recently, “who thought that he had succeeded in coaxing a specimen into a pail, had the mortification of seeing it dismember itself at the last moment, and asserts that the eye which is placed at the end of a limb gave a perceptible wink as he picked up the fragment!”

Here too, most of the “brittle stars” are self-conscious to the point of self-obliteration.  But some, though still quite worthy the specific title FRAGILISSMA, which science has bestowed upon the tribe, may, if taken up tenderly, be handled without the loss of a single limb, and a limb more or less can hardly be of consequence to a creature which, no greater than half a walnut shell, possesses five, each 12 or 14 inches long, and supplied with innumerable feet.  Further, so far, none of the vestiges of those that have committed the form of hari-kari, fashionable among the species, has been observed to behave in any way unbecoming the shyest, most retiring and most sensitive of creatures.  The brittle star discards its limbs, or the best part of them, in the meekest manner possible.

To enumerate the smaller and lowlier of the many creatures that live on the coral reef would be a task utterly beyond ordinary capability.  The reader must be content with reference to a few of the more conspicuous of the denizens.

THE WARTY GHOUL