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I felt wild with spirits, and could have shouted in the exuberance of my enjoyment. I could have danced in my glee, as the foamy snowflakes fell round me, and my face grew stiff and wet with the briny air. The white manes of the sea-horses arched themselves as they swept to their destruction. How the wind whistled and raved, like a hunted thing!
The meal was scarcely over when notice was given that a herd of sea-horses, or walruses, or morse, as they are sometimes called, had come into the fiord, and were at no great distance from the bay. The opportunity of catching some of these animals, so valuable to the Esquimaux, was not to be lost, so, seizing their spears and lines, they hurried down to the beach.
Every portal is a work of art; round every corner comes a new surprise, a fountain with sea-horses and deities, a mediæval well, a moss-grown ruin of Imperial times, or a church with a tower whence bells have rung for centuries over Rome. And what a commotion there is in all these narrow streets! Here comes a peasant driving his asses weighed down with baskets of melons and grapes.
In what ways are these rock-pool fish so well fitted to live in such places? Now and again that queer fish called the Sea-horse is found by our coast; a little brown fish, with bluish-white spots and lines on the sides and tail. But Sea-horses are common in warmer seas, in the banks of seaweed where they love to dwell. You would never guess that these curious creatures were fish.
The sails were furled and the anchors were dropped, and we may imagine that a salute was fired in honour of the King of Portugal, and was duly acknowledged. It was in winter that Mr. Francis Day arrived a time of the year when Madras looks its best and when the sea-horses are not always at their wildest tricks; and Mr. Francis Day landed without accident, and was pleased with the scene.
One of the latest additions to the Zoo is a wonderful Aquarium, where all sorts of strange fishes and sea-creatures can be seen swimming about in natural surroundings, lit from above. From the huge wicked-looking octopuses with their snake-like feelers, to the tiny sea-horses with heads very like those of the knights in chess pieces, there are wonders untold.
The omniscient schoolboy must often have watched in aquariums the habits and manners of the common sea-horses, twisted together by their long thin bodies into one inextricable mass of living matwork, or anchored firmly with a treble serpentine coil to some projecting branch of coralline or of quivering sea-wrack.
A beautiful fountain stands in the midst; and two splendid statues, one representing Hercules and the other David, adorn the entrance. The glorious fountain of Ammanato, drawn by sea-horses and surrounded by Tritons, is not far off. In the Gherardeska palace we find a fresco representing the horrible story of Ugolino.
But the element of wit is almost absent; it is displayed in oppressively obvious forms, so that it loses its subtlety: it represents women terminating in floral scrolls, or sea-horses with leaves growing instead of fins.
These mighty beasts, subsequently known as walrusses or sea-horses, were found sometimes in swarms of two hundred at a time, basking in the arctic sun, and seemed equally at home on land, in the sea, and on icebergs.
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