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"So the company fished for minnows, and not a word could we say about our pearl-fisheries and coral-banks! And as for fishing for minnows ourselves, my dear boy, we should have been less bewildered if you had asked us to fish for a mermaid! Do you see, now, one reason why I have let you go thus early into the world?

If you found a little schoolboy on his half-holiday fishing for minnows with a crooked pin, and you began to tell him of all the wonders of the deep, the laws of the tides, and the antediluvian relies of iguanodon and ichthyosaurus; nay, if you spoke but of pearl fisheries and coral-banks, or water-kelpies and naiads, would not the little boy cry out peevishly, 'Don't tease me with all that nonsense; let me fish in peace for my minnows! I think the little boy is right after his own way: it was to fish for minnows that he came out, poor child, not to hear about iguanodons and water-kelpies.

If you found a little schoolboy on his half-holiday fishing for minnows with a crooked pin, and you began to tell him of all the wonders of the deep, the laws of the tides, and the antediluvian relies of iguanodon and ichthyosaurus; nay, if you spoke but of pearl fisheries and coral-banks, or water-kelpies and naiads, would not the little boy cry out peevishly, 'Don't tease me with all that nonsense; let me fish in peace for my minnows! I think the little boy is right after his own way: it was to fish for minnows that he came out, poor child, not to hear about iguanodons and water-kelpies.

"It is about four miles ahead now, and they are at half steam again, because the reefs are bad in here coral-banks and ledges running out from the mainland. When they get her in the lee of the island they'll make a quick job of her, and us, too." "If I don't make a quick job of them with the pistol," I said.

The small headlands on the continent also have coral-banks attached to them; and the Querimba islands and banks are placed on the lines of prolongation of these headlands, and are separated from them by very shallow channels.

"So the company fished for minnows, and not a word could we say about our pearl-fisheries and coral-banks! And as for fishing for minnows ourselves, my dear boy, we should have been less bewildered if you had asked us to fish for a mermaid! Do you see, now, one reason why I have let you go thus early into the world?