sob--have been mute and unable to find excuse for the faintest sigh. The
branches which thinly shaded me hung limp and still and yet the soft,
white-footed sea marking time on the harder sands of the mainland set
distance at naught in one continuous murmur.

However listless the air, the coral-reef, though its crowded life is
inarticulate and mute is ever brisk with minor but strenuous noises.
Splashes and gurgles, sighs and gasps, coughs and sneezes, sharp clicks
and snaps and snarls--telling of alarms, tragic escapes, and violent
death-dealings--blend with the continuous murmur of the sea, and are
occasionally punctuated by sudden slaps and thuds as a blundering,
hammer-head shark pursues a high-leaping eagle-ray, or the red-backed sea
eagle dashes down upon a preoccupied bream, the impact of its firm breast
embossing a white rosette on the blue water.

In the absence of vibratory media the noises of the reef are isolated.
furtive, echoless--staccato accidentals and dull dissonances out of tune
with the soothing theme of the sea. Hence, when, as I wandered absorbed
in an inspection of minor details, and a mellow whistle, constant but
varying in volume, broke in upon my musings, it was vain to repress the
thrill of excitement. A sound so foreign and incongruous also had a
certain element of mystery. In a flash unsensational ponderings were
displaced by a picture of a steamer in distress far away. Had I not on a
similar occasion of a secret-disclosing tide heard through seven miles of
insulted and sullen air the flop of an inch or so of dynamite exploded by
a heartless barbarian for the illicit destruction of vivacious fish? Had
I not listened with amazement to the buzz of a steamer's propeller and
the throb of her engines six miles away when unaccustomed "nigger-heads"
of coral showed yellow in the sun? The calm, shallow sea conveyed the
sounds with marvellous fidelity and surety. Yet this unaccountable call