Curious indeed was the freak of fortune which, before I was thirteen years old, threw me like a frond of drifting seaweed upon one of the scattered cays of the Mexican Gulf. About the manner of my arrival I propose to say nothing here; sufficient for present purposes to note that I was entirely alone upon that desolate patch of sand, hardly worthy of the name of islet, its very existence as a fragment of dry land dependent upon a bristling barrier of black boulders that bared their ravening fangs at every ebb. When the tide was up their position was solely marked by long lines of snowy breakers whose magnitude, accumulated by a protracted struggle shorewards over the vast outlying coral banks, was enormous,—so huge, in fact, that it was seldom possible, even when standing upon the apex of the islet, to see the horizon line, which stretched its perfect circle all around.

The defending fringe of jagged rocks formed by no means a continuous barrier. In fact it was more properly a series of parallels sufficiently separated to have admitted small vessels between them, should the turbulent swell ever be quiet enough to permit such daring navigation. At one point a sort of causeway ran seaward some hundreds of feet at right angles to the beach. The crags of which this was composed were bared at half ebb, but from their tops one could in places look down into blue hollows where no bottom could be seen. Except when the wind was high, this ridge, though exceedingly difficult to traverse, from its broken character, was protected from battering seas. Lying, as it did, so much nearer the land, and in a different direction to the other barriers, it was sheltered by them to such an extent that only upon rare occasions was it swept from end to end by a lingering, lolloping swell that did not break.

Driven by that same pitiless necessity that had compelled me to ferret out the means of existence somehow since I reached my tenth year, it was no long time before I discovered that this rugged spur was the best place for fishing, especially with regard to Crustacea, because a multitude of fish inhabited the irregular cavities of the reef beneath. And since I had water in abundance, a 400-gallon tank full having washed ashore from the wreck, while of biscuit and fishing-tackle there was also some store, I spent a good deal of my time upon the uneven pathway formed by this natural pier. Contenting myself with small bait cut from some luckless baby octopus I always waylaid at starting. I was untroubled by fish too large for my immature strength, though on several occasions I only just succeeded in tearing half the palpitating body of my catch out of the eager jaws of some monster that rushed at him as he made his involuntary journey upwards.

Although so young, I was fairly seasoned to alarms and not at all nervous, which was as well, for if I had been I should probably have died of fright during the first night of my stay on the islet. But there was one inexplicable noise that always made me feel as if I had swallowed a lump of ice accidentally when I heard it. Even while on board the ship I never felt easy about it, the less so because I could never find an explanation of its origin. It sounded as if some giant had smitten the sea flatly with a huge paddle, or, still more, as if an extra large whale were “lob-tailing”—i.e. poised in the water head downwards, and striking deliberate blows upon its surface with his mighty flukes. This is a favourite habit with the larger cetacea, but only in the daytime, although I did not then know of it. The noise which scared me, however, was only heard at night, when, with a calm sea and not a breath of wind stirring, it assailed my ears like a summons from the unseen world. For this cause alone I was always glad to see the blessed daylight flooding the sky again.

Several days wore away uneventfully enough, and I was getting quite inured to silence and solitude, when it befell that the ebb came late in the afternoon. By the slant of the sun I judged it must be somewhere about five o’clock when I climbed out along the slippery causeway to my favourite spot—a smooth hollow in the crest of a great boulder, from which comfortable perch I could look down on either side into deep, blue water. Here I seated myself cosily, and soon hauled up a dozen or so of sizable fish. Then, having ample provision, I rolled up my line, and lounged at ease, sleepily surveying the unspeakable glories of the sunset. Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell, but the time slipped away unnoticed by me, till suddenly I started up, every nerve tingling with fear at the sound I so much dreaded somewhere very close at hand. I trembled so violently that I could not go back just yet; indeed, I could not stand, but sank into my stony seat. At that moment I turned my head to the right, and saw rising out of the water apparently quite slowly a hideous shape, if shape it could be said to possess any. In the gathering gloom it appeared almost like a gigantic bat as far as its general outline could be seen, but I never heard of a water-bat. For quite an appreciable space it hung in the quiet air, changing all the placid beauty of the evening into brain-benumbing horror for me; then with an unfolding movement it fell upon the glassy surface, producing the awe-inspiring sound I had so often shuddered at, its volume augmented tenfold by its nearness. Like some fascinated bird, I remained motionless, staring at the rapidly smoothing spot where the awful thing had disappeared. Then suddenly the sea at my feet became all black, and out of its depths there arose close at my side a monster that was the embodied realisation of my most terrified imaginings. Its total area must have been about 200 square feet. It was somewhat of a diamond shape, with a tapering, sinewy tail about as long again as its body. Where I judged its head to be was a convex hollow, which opened widely as it rose, disclosing rows of shining teeth, set like those of a human being. At each side of this gulf rose a spiral horn about two feet long, looking like twisted whalebone, and guarding the eyes which lay between them. Oh, those eyes! Though not much more than twice as large as a horse’s, as they glared through the wide slits within which they festered the ruddy sheen of the sunset caught them, making them glow bloodily with a plenitude of ghastly ferocity that haunts me yet. And on either side of the thing undulated gigantic triangular wings, raising its mass into the air with noiseless ease.

All this and more I saw in the breathless space of its ascent; then it hung between me and heaven, the livid corrupt-looking corrugations of its underside all awork, as it seemed, to enfold my shrinking flesh. Those fractions of a second, stretched into hours, during which my starting pupils photographed every detail of the loathsome beast, passed away at last, and it descended slantingly over me. Then amidst a roar of water in my ears the darkness swallowed me up, and I knew no more. I am inclined to think that I owe my life to the trancelike state into which I had fallen, for although it appeared a frightfully long time before I saw the sweet evening light again, I was not nearly so exhausted as I have been on other occasions, when compelled to take a long dive. But after I had scrambled up on to the rock again, wondering to find myself still alive, such a recurrence of overmastering fear seized me that it was all I could do to crawl crab-wise over the stony pinnacles back to the sand again. My strength only held out until I had reached a spot above high-water mark. There I subsided into blissful unconsciousness of all things, and knew no more until a new day was far advanced, and the terror of the previous night only a distressing memory apparently of some previous stage of existence. Years afterwards I learned that the hideous thing which had thus scared me almost to death was one of the raiidÆ, or skate tribe. Locally it is known as the alligator guard, or devil fish, and, truly, its appearance justifies such an epithet. It is apparently harmless to man, but why, alone among the CephalopteridÆ, it should have the curious habit of taking these nocturnal leaps out of water is a mystery.