Presently more came up, till there were five or six of the monsters
all fighting for the prey, which they soon devoured. "There, you see
how soon they smelt the blood. What you think of sharks, now?"

"I think," said I, "that this is not exactly the place to bathe in."

The tide being now well on the ebb, the fish stopped biting, perhaps
driven away by the sharks, and we sailed down to the inlet, where
there is a long sandy beach fringed with mangroves: behind these, low
hillocks of sand covered with saw-palmetto extend across to the
ocean, perhaps half a mile; and here is an expanse of sandy beach some
hundreds of yards in width at low tide, hard and smooth, so that one
could drive from St. Augustine to the south end of the peninsula were
it not for the creeks and inlets.

On the river-front is a long bed of oysters, growing up to high-water
mark, the upper ones poor, called "raccoon oysters" by the natives,
but the lower ones, which are mostly covered with water, large, fat
and delicious. We gathered about a bushel of these, built a fire of
dead mangrove wood, which is the best of fuel, and when we had a good
bed of coals threw on the oysters. The heat, at the same time that it
roasted them, obliged them to open their valves, so that it was both
easy and pleasant to take them on the half shell. Besides these free
gifts of Nature, we had with us from the hotel biscuits, cold meat and
doughnuts. While we were eating, a handsome sailboat from the hotel
came to the beach: it contained a party of ladies and gentlemen who
were going for shells, which are numerous on the sea-beach, though not
many of the finer sorts are found so far north. After a heavy storm
the paper nautilus is sometimes found. Sea-beans of various kinds
are numerous, and the search for them, and the polishing of them when