Three Bays

I

THREE is a magic number, and a bay is in the upper bracket of wonders of the world. If you are in a lake in a boat, you cannot get anywhere else; if on an island, you are completely isolated. But a bay permits access to all the seven seas, and at the same time affords a safe haven from dangers, within the kindly outstretched arms of Mother Earth.

Along the great curving sweep of the Pacific from Mexico to Panama there are forty-odd bays, and into every one we nosed the Zaca. It was the Thirtyeighth Expedition made by the Department of Tropical Research of the New York Zoölogical Society, and for the second time Templeton Crocker had put his splendid two-masted yacht at our disposal in our search for rare creatures of sea and land. We found each bay to be a little world in itself, bounded on one side by great smashing breakers of the open sea, and on the other by range upon range of lofty sierras, which shut out all fierce storms and also, by insulation, preserved the ancient charm and simplicity of the native inhabitants.

The twoscore bays were as individual as people; some were good for our purposes, others quite barren of life. But always the great breakers of the Pacific boomed on rock or sand, the surging tides reaching up hungrily and impartially toward cactus or orchid; always the life of tide pools and shallows, and the unbelievable creatures of the cold black depths, held us breathless. An exploring scientist cheats life at every step, for minute by minute he is able to extract more of fun and sheer joy than any other human being.

Tangola-Tangola may be taken as typical of the bays of southwestern Mexico, a sort of no man’s land as to north and south. From the first day we saw it on the chart it appeared promising, with its sheltered anchorage and varied types of bottom for dredging. Furthermore, we liked its name, with its stuttering suggestion of a South Sea island.

Back from the crescent of the water’s edge, the shore rose into low hills covered thickly with scrubby cactus growth and small trees, partly dry, partly green, with here and there masses of white frangipani, or scattered blossoms of bright yellow. The only radical departure from this type of foliage was the low stretches of intense green mangroves, marking the contours of lagoons of various sizes, just behind the sand dunes.

Landing through breakers is always exciting. When there were several of us, the danger, even from an unexpected undertow, was reduced to minimum, yet we were always worried about guns, cameras, and glasses until we were safe ashore. Curiously enough, the greatest risk in this respect, until we learned how to cope with it, was after the boat had stranded in barely six inches of water.

With our precious instruments clutched tight, we sat braced on the seats, facing shoreward, while our Samoan manœuvred so that we should start on the summil of one of the lesser swells and ride it swiftly, with the next, perhaps a giant, following close behind. I have never seen any explanation, and it is probably an endless series of coincidences, but time after time the waves seemed to come in threes — three ordinary ones, then a whale of a fourth. Up and down we would float, high aloft and down into the trough of swell after swell. Then Pe’s muscles would ripple; quick powerful strokes gave us impetus, so that we remained on the crest, rushing along with it faster and faster, yet holding back to the shoulder of the green-curving breaker; then a final rush through the seething white smother. The froth came past, far higher than our gunwale, but water at such a moment has no time to turn and pour sideways, and it and we must hurtle shorewards. With a final pull Pe shouted to us to leap, and, even as we obeyed, the sand had stopped the boiling flood and turned it back.

Now was the critical moment, and we had learned to look at the boat or at the shore, but never at the water around us. If we did this last, the optical illusion would be our undoing. Time after time, until I had learned better, I stepped out of an absolutely stationary boat, solidly grounded in the sand, and pitched forward headlong on my face. The stop had occurred without a jolt, but the return wave rushing past us out to sea gave the impression that we were surging swiftly ahead. All our instinctive sense of balance came into play to counteract this movement, and before our feet could undeceive us, could tell that there was no motion whatever, we would crash to our knees in the sandy rush. It was the old story of another train slowly passing our stationary one, only this was deception carried to the nth power. The best way of all was to shut one’s eyes and jump.

Just as we started swell-riding in Tangola-Tangola, a terrific tug on my trolling line nearly upset me, and some great fish splashed astern. Simultaneously, a magnificent male man-o’-war bird swooped on narrow, angular wings, its toy balloon of a scarlet throat pouch half inflated, and looked at my catch. I had only a net and the line in my hand, and when we stranded I was over like a flash. All I had learned about not looking at the passing wave was forgotten in the excitement, and, although we were motionless in three inches of water, I shot forward in a beautiful somersault. My wrist was cut deep by the taut line before I could get up, stop the fish, avoid the next wave, and haul in a lovely lilac and bronze jack-crevalle, fighting to the last, and drawing several others of his kind up to the curving, transparent mirror of the second line of swells.

II

At one side of the bay of Tangola, squared, were steep cliffs, and here giant limpets were everywhere, especially on the outermost promontories. They were really big chaps, measuring about four by six inches, sloping up at a slow, comfortable angle to a blunt summit. At almost low tide, as far down as I could see, the limpets were crawling about. Above water they were scattered quite regularly as to general abundance, but with no regularity as to orientation of head, rear, or side, and averaging about two limpet lengths from each other. This made it difficult for any individual to move in a straight line without touching or climbing over the shell of a neighbor. Long before the tide covered them, the limpets began to stand on tiptoe, which is to say about a half inch from the rock, to get under way and to graze. Each was surrounded by an aura of short greenish algæ.

I selected one limpet, named him Breathless, and watched him. He protruded his head and began creeping slowly forward. As he moved, he exposed, on the surface of the rock where he had been resting, a thin, white deposit of lime where his body and the edge of the shell had lain. The growth of greenishblack algæ began immediately outside of this oval. The head of my limpet was bent down, and the tips of the back horns and tentacles touched the surface. The latter played deliberately about, evidently feeling the way, while the mouth was constantly applied to the rock. Wherever this passed, a narrow swath of algæ was eliminated, the rock becoming clearly visible, not hidden as before the passing of the snail’s scythe. Soon the limpet came in contact with his nearest neighbor and kept on pushing. The animal pushed against raised its shell and faced the intruder. My snail pushed beneath the other’s shell, and then ensued a struggle between living tanks. I could detect the strain and leverage. This continued for several minutes, every down-crashing rain of spray from the advancing waves giving the animals increased energy. For a time the push was equal, resulting only in both shells being slightly canted upward; then my friend gave way and turned to one side. All this time he had never ceased grazing from his neighbor’s land. My last view of Breathless showed him turned and headed for the pasturage of another of his fellows. As he sped, his neck (if such a term can be used) behind the head was lifted clear of the rock, arched upward so that only the mouth, the tentacle tips, and the oval foot touched the surface.

On many of the limpets large barnacles were growing, and whenever a wave covered the mollusk even for a few seconds the crustaceans opened their ivory gates and swept madly at the water with their little curved feet. On two large adjoining rocks, covered with about two hundred of these great snails, every limpet had a small limpet attached to its shell. A few had three. As the greater one crawled slowly from its ‘form,’ so, at the same time, the young one on its back also left its pitch, its camping place showing a white tissue of lime. Within ten minutes, while I watched, one small limpet made a complete circuit of his mount’s shell, eating as he went. Fascinated, I examined two small ones with a lens to see if by chance I could detect a third generation upon their shells, but I saw nothing but tiny crustaceans, sow-bug cousins of the sea.

The problem of food was an interesting one. It would almost seem that the growth of the seaweed must keep pace with the garnered harvest of each day’s requirements. There is not the slightest doubt but that each limpet lives in its own form, perhaps for years, but whether it is able to trek past all its neighbors and go on prolonged foraging expeditions I cannot tell. Somehow it must be able to find sufficient aliment to return to its own particular home.

This homing theory was too important to accept without definite proof. Finally I located two forms which were abnormal, with an irregularity at one point in the circumference of each. I began searching and soon found both tenants. I pried them from their hold and carried them back, one at a time, and found that they fitted perfectly into their respective niches. One settled down with the break in his shell fitting like a machined tool into the break on the edge of the form. When he drew down, no instrument or power of mine could dislodge him. Then I put a strange limpet in the second place. He tried to settle, but his limy circumference did not fit, it was too narrow and had no break in the northwest rim. So he began to crawl away. Then I substituted the rightful owner and all was well. This second animal I had found fifteen feet away on the down slope of a rock wholly out of even my sight of his home. I could trace his safari, however, by the narrow swath through the seaweed. At the change of the tide, which is clock and season for these beings, they all turn, doubtless still feeding, and before the rock dries they are back on their old stand, tight clamped, brooding on whatever limpets know to brood upon.

Once settled down, they are impervious to any ordinary attack by any reasonable enemy. More than a century ago Walter Scott wrote, ‘He stuck like a lampit to a rock,’ and this is the limpet’s quality of qualities. Give him warning, and even the tip of a knife cannot be inserted beneath his person. Whether by the judicious seepage of some weak acid or by sheer attrition, these big fellows are just sufficiently counter-sunk into the rock to make their socket impregnable.

Other kinds of limpets have an oblong hole at the summit of their shelly wigwams — they are known as keyhole limpets. But the great limpets of Tangola-Tangola — Patella mexicana, conchologists call them — lived in solid, massive, concrete tents; the lock was spiked, the key thrown away, and the combination wholly lost in a passive resistance which should confine their Enemy Number One to old age.

As I sat and watched my special limpet city, my mind went back to a time three decades ago on the opposite side of the world, when I sat in my Chinese houseboat and looked at one of the strangest of cities. It too had quaint roofs, it was built on mighty rocks, and it also had a feeling of quiet capability. It was on the Yangtze River, at the entrance of the great gorges, and its name was Ichang. So before I left my Tangola-Tangola city of limpets I printed the word ICHANG very blackly, and erected it in a cleft stick. I felt it was appropriate because in Chinese it means ‘ Fitting Prosperity,’ and I thought the limpets would like that. At times even a scientist likes to be foolish.

III

The Bay of Corinto is small, in the heart of a wilderness of mangroves, grotesque trees standing everywhere on spindly stilts of roots in glistening mud, or wading knee-deep at high tide.

We looked eastward from the deck of the Zaca as she swung at her Corinto anchorage, and the horizon was a level stretch of green. This was the outer, pioneer growth of the mangrove wilderness, and was worthily named Isla Encantada — the Enchanted Island. In a launch we went up the main tidal waterway, locally called rio, and on for miles into smaller and smaller channels, twisting and turning until our boat actually grounded on marshy land, where we caught glimpses of apparently amphibious cattle. There was no need to blaze our way, although every mangrove looked exactly like every other millionth one, and although, en route, we boxed nine tenths of the compass. In order to retrace our steps we simply drifted with the ebbing tide, and always chose larger and larger openings. Patient herons were everywhere, motionless as Japanese screens — waiting for low tide; gaudy crabs scuttled around the arching roots, which in turn were braided with sleeping snails and frilled with oysters.

As we paddled along the tortuous channels, unexpected things happened: as when something fell from an overhead branch into the water near by and drenched us with spray. The only person who happened to be watching said it was a very short and thick snake, but I had seen an iguana in the air before, and knew that the closely folded legs in the dive would make a half glimpse fit this description. This water dive gains interest when we know that when the lizard leaps from a treetop it spreadeagles to fullest extent to help break its fall onto scrub, and incidentally to make us wonder if such a performance was not part of the beginning of flight in birds.

At low tide a seining party went into the mangroves and tried to land on an exposed mud bank. The first two men sank slowly, but with apparent prospect of complete ultimate submergence into the black, sticky mass. They were extracted with difficulty and to an accompaniment of epithets expressing distinct disapproval of the experience. The only other method of unaided entrance by human beings was by climbing from arch to arch of what botanists call ‘pithy, lenticulate, arching prop roots.’ This looked easy, but when to the soaplike slipperiness of the roots was added their unpredictable yielding quality, the unattached bases of many, and the total lack of solid footing, progression was exhausting, painful, and futile.

Night worked a magic in this region, which we discovered by accident. Late one afternoon we drifted slowly down the maze of outer channels. Mud banks were being rapidly uncovered and birds became numerous. Spotted sandpipers trotted singly along the edge of the water, and Hudsonian curlews were in twos and threes. Now and then they rose and went off through side passages with their wonderful notes ringing out, somehow out of place in these hot mangrove jungles. Alabaster egrets watched us pass, and not even an eyelid moved. A pair of fork-tailed flycatchers appeared in the treetops and swooped swiftly up, around, and down, their tail feathers floating and curving after them. A snakebird climbed, awkward as a sea lion on land, and twoscore white ibises were the loveliest of all the birds, long white streamers against the dark green, set off with bright pink foreheads and beaks. Six parakeets flew over, screeching, and still higher the vultures always watched us hopefully.

As we went on into the sunset, the afterglow grew into a marvelous intensity, staining the mangrove roots bright red and the waters of the bay bright orange and salmon from the gold and scarlet clouds. At this moment I saw a faint mist of dots moving high over the mangroves. They might have been a cloud of gnats fifty feet away, or sandpipers at a quarter mile, or innumerable vultures a full mile off. My number sixes were no use, and only twelves resolved them definitely into birds. I watched until my eyes ached, for I had never seen so many feathered creatures at once, and was rewarded. At last one dark mass veered and swung downward, and as they went the rays of the setting sun painted them for a moment with pure emerald, and a thousand green meteors vanished below the mangrove horizon — Amazon parrots, to my guess.

The next night I anticipated this marvelous sight, and I went ashore on the distant Enchanted Island. I found a horizon opening and arranged myself comfortably on the beach. The hosts appeared in the distant sky suddenly without my seeing them arrive, four separate legions that shuttled back and forth, silhouetted against the sky. The flocks would almost fuse and then separate again, the fraying strands being always parrot-wise in twos, fours, or sixes. For a long ten minutes they swung high in air, drawn like gray veils across the afterglow and the lavender cones of the distant volcanoes. Then a new flock came from nowhere, not more than a quarter mile away, and my focus was perfect. I plainly saw the green color, and suddenly the long, pointed tails. So they were not parrots, but parrakeets or conures.

What amusing things our sense organs are! When I held the birds in focus, sitting breathless and open-mouthed, I could distinctly hear the faint screaming from the thousands of throats. When I labored with naked eyesight alone, the sound died to vanishing point, increasing, a moment later, through the glasses. It seems impossible to record sense impressions of more than one kind simultaneously with equal perception.

At every swoop of the birds a few isolationists would ravel out and a few pairs dive down, not to reappear. My fifth flock crossed and amalgamated with one of the others, and then the whole multitude hurled itself down in a final nose dive, and out of sight. No hint in the low, dead-level horizon line told of the sleeping tens of thousands of little breathing forms. Scores of mangroves had their foliage doubled, as innumerable pairs of parrakeets huddled close together on the branches, and apart from all other pairs. Without our man-made, high-power binoculars we should never have known what they were.

But the scientist in me was still far from satisfied. There are more than a dozen species of parrots and parrakeets in this general region, and how could I make certain of the exact species of this somnolent army? I offered a reward, then a larger one, a third more munificent. All to no use: no one would venture into the fearsome mangroves at night: cosas — ‘things’ — floated there in the moonlight which it were ill to gaze upon.

As so often happens to me, proof came in a roundabout way. We were drinking most excellent beer amid the tarnished magnificence of Christie’s bar in Corinto when I was hailed by a stout, jolly person who recalled to me that in years past I used to buy birds from him, at the time I was building up the collection in the Zoölogical Society’s Zoo. In the back yard of the bar were hundreds of parrots and small sad-faced monkeys, which he was taking to New York. He had none of my parrakeets, but knew of a boy who had caught one. The bird had fallen into the water, after a fight with one of its kind, from a large passing flock.

The boy was summoned and the bird changed hands for fifty centavos, or about twelve cents. It was perfectly tame and climbed about our persons, making contented little sounds and gratefully accepting anything edible. Here were eleven inches of pleasant personality, clothed in greens of various pleasing shades, from grass to apple. As we approached the Zaca I was externally merely the possessor of a new pet; within I felt the unpleasant symptoms of a Judas. On board, Perico immediately held court and happily received the approval of everyone. Only the cats watched the newcomer with unexpressive agate eyes, but a slight movement of the lips.

What I had to do I had to do quickly, so while everyone was drinking cocktails I excused myself with some mumbled lie and went below. When I came up I had an extra-quick one and probably exhibited futile enthusiasms about nothing in particular. One of my staff has a keen nose for chloroform, and soon after dinner my crime was discovered. I became an outcast and a thing abhorred and was reminded none too gently that even to the lowest savages the life of a guest is sacred. I protested something about the cats, and that Perico had passed away painlessly with a smile on her beak, but it did little good. At least she fulfilled a destiny of sorts and we now knew that the mangrove multitudes were Aratinga holochlora strenua, the Nicaraguan Ivory-billed Green Parrakeet. At which my unsympathetic Carcinologist remarked, ‘So what ? ‘

III

We were blown out of Nicaragua and into Costa Rica by a lusty Papagayo. For some unknown reason this word, which in German means ‘parrot,’ here signified an eternal continental draft, a pain in the neck of our researches, blowing through the open window in the wall of the mighty Sierra Mountains. It is a whole winter affair, from November to April, so if you are a native you either get used to it or go crazy. For once I appreciated the old-fashioned maps which had personified cherubs and devils blowing, with distended cheeks, the good and the evil winds.

The first notch in the coast of Costa Rica is the bay of Santa Elena, and we headed for a baylet in its side with the title of El Canelo, or Cinnamon Bay. After the hours of fierce buffeting it looked to us like the fabled Isles of Spice. In fact it proved to be one of the loveliest places of earth, bounded by mountains which mitigated the source of the wind, roughly circular, about a mile across, with heavy jungle on the nearer slopes. The higher ranges to the north rose to grass and rocky heights, the trees dying out in straggling pioneers.

There may be more diversified regions, but for its size I have never seen its equal in this respect. The greatest drawback was the overlapping of distinct areas — the three-ringed circus of interest of the wild life of sea, shore, and jungle. This is a bay where I should like to spend a full year through all the seasons, watching the shift and change under water, along the shore, in mangroves, palm and thorn forest, and upland grass meadows.

One of our first trips took us through lush mangroves, the tide carrying us along through ever-narrowing channels until we pushed our way by hand along ultimate water paths, flushing curlews, bitterns, herons, and kingfishers. Dry land appeared and we climbed up into an enchanted forest, or rather park, of lofty trees where bands of spider monkeys swung by their tails, apparently exchanging pointed remarks on how queer human beings looked upside down.

One lot of three females were all carrying babies, and in all the pram method was identical. The baby had its tail tightly wrapped around the base of its mother’s tail, as it lay on her back, with its little arms around her mid-body, gripping the hair on the lower sides. The hind legs lay straight out behind, with the black soles up, dangling close to the haunch of the mother. In this way the limbs and tail of the parent were quite free, and the baby safe from any sudden danger of being crushed when the mother dropped from one branch or tree to another, with widespread limbs. When the parents sat down and looked at us, the little chaps would pull themselves up, and their black faces would peer at us alongside that of their mummy.

Here I observed what later became a common occurrence, that all the members of the band followed one another, and took exactly the same path through the trees. Each took hold of the identical part of the same branch as the one ahead, leaped free at the same spot, and used the hands at the same place. Arboreal safari for spider monkeys is as fixed as a well-worn trail through thick undergrowth.

Until I was allowed to possess a gun I was botanist and entomologist of sorts; then I became ornithologist for the greater part of my life, and in the last decade I have turned ichthyologist. These are all lip-services, however, for the underlying urge is to glimpse some small, clear gleam of the workings of evolution in some sub-sub-division of an insignificant bypath of animal life and development. So it was that in the intervals between actually straining every effort to solve fish problems of this bay, I was conscious of the wild life in general.

My two assistants had left me alone on East Beach, one on a sketching assignment, and the other to delve into the intimate life of the fiddler crabs among the mud-flats farther along the shore. I settled down between two giant black mangrove trees, one of which was hollow, windand age-worn. I made camp by opening my dispatch case of glasses, note-books, and vials, scooped two holes in the sand for my heels, and sat down on a life-preserver filched from the boat. This precaution was out of respect for the bête rouge, those infinitesimal mites which seem to be among the most successful of living creatures, sustained by the ultimate nth-power hope of being able to feast upon a human being before they die. I have found them equally enthusiastic on the tennis courts of Virginia and in the tropical jungles of British Guiana, and here on the shores of the Pacific they teemed from the grass of the upland meadows to the very jetsam of high tide line.

As my job today was static, I allowed myself the luxury of two pairs of glasses, my smallest Number Threes for near-by use and quick identification, and the powerful Number Twelves which required knee-rest for distance. In addition to my two giant mangroves was a third, a whitened, dead tree. Hardly had I taken my seat when a sonorous swish of wings drew my eyes, and out flew a great blue heron, whose spindly frame and immobility had up to this moment made him one with the tree. As I looked, two black hawks flew into the same tree, the common white-banded black species. They were handsome birds and peered at me fearlessly, uttering pleasantly quavering hawk notes. An interesting thing about birds of prey is the possibility of prophesying the diet of a species from its psychological reaction to human beings. At one end are the vultures which are almost completely fearless. At the other are the fierce falcons and eagles, who pursue and kill their prey, diving after the strongest and swiftest creatures they can manage. These black hawks have the noble facies of gerfalcons, but their all-too-tameness hints that gastronomically they are among the ignoble Raptores, satisfied at the most with small lizards, but usually content with grasshoppers, snails, crabs, and even dead fish. There is nothing vulturine in their mien, but their ease in the presence of mankind is a certain proof that no black hawk ever struck down a flying duck, or any bird near its own weight. By the same token bald eagles are far less wild than are golden eagles.

Two blurred objects on the shore, near two stranded logs, came into focus with a twist of the binocular thread. They were a pair of spotted sandpipers, one with a primary feather reversed and standing straight up from the wing, waving in the breeze. I watched them idly as they passed on, when suddenly there took place within the small circle of the lens a happening that brought me to breathless attention. The little chap with the half-molted feather was abruptly knocked off his feet into a fluttering heap. Discarding the glass, I saw the whole tragedy clearly. The second log, the one somewhat farther away, had come suddenly to life, shifting from dead vegetable to living animal, and with a single, unbelievably swift, sideways flick had knocked the sandpiper over. As I looked, a head turned, jaws opened, and a four-foot crocodile sank from sight with the pitiful fluff of feathers. I watched the rising stream of bubbles, I listened to the agonizing peeeep-peeeep! of the other bird and the shrieking cackles of two oyster-catchers until all were lost in the distance. The only remaining proof of what my eyes had seen was that there remained just one log instead of two. I immediately focused on the second to make certain it was what it appeared to be. During the past two days I had watched small crocodiles floating past, but the movement plus the two bulging eyes identified them at once. This stranded individual had completely fooled two sandpipers and myself.

A medley of voices arose soon after the sandpiper tragedy, and as it did not die down, I walked quietly along the inland trail. Just beyond the uprooted base of a giant tree, I saw the flock of birds and simultaneously felt a sharp bite on my ankle. I had stepped into the line of march of army ants, and as instantly I stepped out again. The reason for the flock now became apparent; they were the camp-following vanguard feeding on the insects which crept, ran, hopped, or flew to escape their dreaded enemy. I found a convenient dead branch and as quietly as possible drew it back and forth across the trail of the ants. I knew that this would so infuriate them that they would deploy in search of the creature which dared disturb them, and this would keep them, and consequently the birds, in the same place for some time. I sought safety and settled to watch. There were four kinds of antbirds and a surprising lot of orioles. Three troupials fluttered about after insects, alternating satisfied swallows with clusters of liquid notes. A blackthroated oriole flew down close to me, and then suddenly I was glad to see a friend from home, a Baltimore oriole among these alien surroundings. What tales migrants such as this and the sandpipers had to tell their nestlings. No wonder each season’s brood is so anxious to set out on its autumnal, austral voyage of discovery!

Finally, six rich rufous beauties scaled down to the ant-driven harvest — rufous cuckoos. They measured more than a half yard over all, and their exciting loveliness of plumage, with the long, trailing, white-tipped tail made them most conspicuous birds. They saw me at once but showed only polite curiosity, now and then uttering their low, soft snarl, which is in no sense a snarl, but lacks any adequate expression in the English tongue. They flew gently, gliding whenever possible, and fed gently, daintily selecting small morsels with no sense of hunger or haste, but somewhat reluctantly, like the oystereating carpenter.

I was squatting quite motionless and comfortably, having only now and then to wink. So one cuckoo relegated me to the background of innocuous growths and, alighting on a partly bare branch, proceeded to take a sun-bath. The plumage of these cuckoos is so soft and silky that it would seem as if the water or dust bath to which most birds are addicted would leave it with permanently bedraggled feathers. This sun-bathing was as elaborate as it has become among human beings, but was infinitely more artistic and pleasing to observe. The bird first sat still and looked in all directions, complimenting me by concentrating on the branches overhead and the sky. It suddenly struck a pose, legs apart, leaning backward, slanting the great tail and spreading it until it formed a gorgeous, open, feathered fan, curved so that the white tips showed from both sides. The wing on the slanted side followed and was expanded until, like the argus pheasant, it presented a plaque, in this case of solid rufous. Always the eye of the bird played back and forth across the sky; at least at such a period of toiletmaking, a realization of possible danger was evident.

Slowly the feathers of the head and neck were raised (through the lenses I could distinguish every separate plume), until all beauty of color was lost, and the plaque acquired the appearance of moth-eaten plumage long neglected in some dusty attic. After a few minutes the bird began to pant, and in addition to general dishevelment was added the impression of acute physical torture. Ten minutes, and all muscles relaxed, and the bird began to pick and preen its plumage, the intensive picking hinting that ticks and bête rouge may afflict Piaya cayana as well as Homo sapiens. Not until a second bath was enjoyed by the other wing, with the tail reslanted, did the bird shake its whole being, wipe its beak on the branch and fly up into a mass of lavender flowers-ofCortez.

On my return to the shore, I had once more settled down to a final hour of writing when a tantalizing wheezy note arose from the tree overhead. I had to determine whether it was insect or bird, and my eye went at once to what looked like a small duck perched in a crotch. This spelled no sense whatever, yet amid the shadows of the foliage I could see bill, eye, and the head drawn close to the back. Two feet farther up I was startled to see the brilliant and unmistakable tail loop of a boa constrictor, and now I followed it down to the small duck, the scales fell from my eyes, and for the life of me I could not regain the anatine illusion; there was no duck, there had been no duck; only three loops of a beautifully colored serpent. I needed a boa for comparison with a strangely patterned specimen I had caught a few days before. A second would decide whether this unusual coloration was of specific or only individual significance.

The snake was twenty feet above me, on a dead branch which would not sustain my weight for a moment. I cut a long, forked stick and began to jiggle him, which made him only grip the tighter. He began to creep slowly up the branch, when I got a good purchase with a recurved crook, and swinging on it, broke the whole branch, and down came a rain of rotten wood, debris, dust, and more than seven feet of snake. Fearing it would escape if it touched the ground, I blindly clutched at it in mid-air, and no lifelong-trained juggler could have done it better, for my fingers closed firmly around the neck just behind the head. Like all his kind, he gaped widely, uttering hiss after hiss, showing every needle tooth and an enormous expanse of dead white gullet, all the time trying with every muscle to coil and twist free. Then he gave up and, as boas are real gentlemen, he shrugged whatever passes for serpentine shoulders and resigned himself to what might come. From this moment on, there was no visible resentment or active attempt at escape. The coils came slowly up and around my hand and arm, and when I had cleared the dirt from my eyes, I did not have to shift my grip a single inch.

Back at my seat I found there was no string or bag or container, so that I had to shift my hold to my left hand and continue my notes with my right. My foot rested gently on his tail on the sand, because with all his folds in a double lock on my wrist he was able to stop the blood supply, and the hand ached too much to keep a tight grip. As it was, I had to stop writing every ten minutes, shift hands, and exercise to restore circulation. As the lowering sun struck his armor, he was one of the most beautiful things in the world, each scale giving off blue and green fire-opal reflections. Like the jumbled mass of leaf patterns and leaf shadows scattered along his body, his very eyes, lidless and unwinking, were also mottled with gray and brown, while the vertical slit of visual connection with the outside world was almost invisible.

During one of the hand-to-hand shifts I happened to look out over the bay, and saw floating past a pair of huge sea turtles, clasped in the awkward embrace of chelonian affection. I focused my glasses and perceived that it was a most active amorous episode, for not only were they excitedly clambering over and around one another, but both were revolving as they drifted past. First one arched back would emerge decorated with clusters of barnacles, and then the other, gay with waving strands of emerald seaweed. Which sex flaunted the weed and which had acquired the barnacle insignia will never be known. This afternoon was rapidly becoming dominantly a reptilian one.

When I withdrew my eyes from the binoculars, I found that I was quite securely handcuffed by two loops of boa, one of which was a figure eight. I saw the boatmen approaching, and did not untwine the snake until they had had full benefit of what to them was an incredibly terrible situation. They were strong, brave, able seamen, but I think if it came to a choice of unwinding the coils with their own hands they would have left me marooned forever on the beach!

I subsequently made my color comparison, housed the boa overnight on the yacht, and next day set him free on the exact spot on which he would have fallen from the tree. He gathered himself together, watched me calmly, and finally, with exploratory flickering of his tongue, slowly and with dignity made his way into a tangle of underbrush. From the opposite side I watched him glide smoothly away. Long before he had passed from my actual field of vision, he vanished suddenly from my inability to disentangle him from his surroundings.

The boa constrictor of East Beach had entered and had left my life; he none the worse, and I with added knowledge and respect for him and for his race.