Woods where you might knock ripe bananas off the trees with a
big cane, sands where golden lizards would scuttle about so tame
that you might with a little caution seize them by the tail, a hill-
top from whence you might see, to use Paddy's expression, "to the
back of beyond"; all these were fine enough in their way, but they
were nothing to the lagoon.

Deep down where the coral branches were you might watch,
whilst Paddy fished, all sorts of things disporting on the sand
patches and between the coral tufts. Hermit crabs that had
evicted whelks, wearing the evicted ones' shells--an obvious
misfit; sea anemones as big as roses. Flowers that closed up in an
irritable manner if you lowered the hook gently down and touched
them; extraordinary shells that walked about on feelers, elbowing
the crabs out of the way and terrorising the whelks. The overlords
of the sand patches, these; yet touch one on the back with a stone
tied to a bit of string, and down he would go flat, motionless and
feigning death. There was a lot of human nature lurking in the
depths of the lagoon, comedy and tragedy.

An English rock-pool has its marvels. You can fancy the marvels
of this vast rock-pool, nine miles round and varying from a third
to half a mile broad, swarming with tropic life and flights of
painted fishes; where the glittering albicore passed beneath the
boat like a fire and a shadow; where the boat's reflection lay as
clear on the bottom as though the water were air; where the sea,
pacified by the reef, told, like a little child, its dreams.

It suited the lazy humour of Mr Button that he never pursued the
lagoon more than half a mile or so on either side of the beach. He