cast up by the south-easterly storms, I carried home most carefully; and after my return from the interior, I found opportunity to continue my collections over a still larger area, and met with a still larger success.
Accompanied by four or five hired negroes, and by my little black waiting-maid Bella, I worked for hours together on the shore, and brought back rare and precious booty to the town.
The capture of the nautilus afforded us great amusement. We used to poke about the pools in the rocks with an iron-wire hook, and if the cephalopod happened to be there it would relinquish its hold upon the rock to which it had been clinging, and make a wild clutch upon the hook, thus enabling us to drag it out; of course, it would instantly fall off again; if it chanced to tumble upon a dry place, it would contract its tentacles and straightway make off to the sea; but if it lighted on the loose shingle we were generally able, by the help of some good-sized stones, to pick it up and make it a prisoner. The bodies of the largest of these mollusks are about five inches in length, but their expanded tentacles often reach to a measure of two feet. They are much sought after and relished by the Malays, who call them cat-fish.
Occasionally we saw young men and women with hammers collecting oysters, cockles, and limpets, to be sold in the town; and every here and there were groups of white boys with little bags, not
