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It was the ray-fish with a flat head, ferocious eyes, and thong-like tail, moving the black mantle of its fleshy wings with a deliberation that rippled the edges. From the sandy bottom was struggling forth a convex shield that, when floating, showed its lower face smooth and yellow. The four wrinkled paws and the serpent-like head of the turtle were emerging from its cuirass of tortoise-shell.
The shaft is made of the flower-stalk of the arrow-grass. The head is composed of hard wood pointed, and sometimes armed with a serrated spine of the ray-fish, covered thickly with poison, and notched, so as easily to break off a most deadly weapon. Their arrows for shooting fish are armed with iron heads, while smaller arrows are used for shooting small game.
To cure the painful and dangerous wound inflicted by a ray-fish, the Indians of the Gran Chaco smoke the wounded limb and then cause a woman in her courses to sit astride of it. An ancient Hindoo method of securing prosperity was to swallow a portion of the menstruous fluid.
He was one of them 'longshore beggars as turns up here, there, and everywhere, galley-raking, like a stinking ray-fish when the tide goes out; thundering scoundrels that make a living of it, pushing out for roguery with their legs tucked up; no courage for smuggling, nor honest enough, they goes on anyhow with their children paid for.
Oval tubs are made by hollowing out a block of wood. Clubs, three feet long, from the iron-wood, or something else that is heavy. Spears, eight feet long, were made from the cocoa-nut tree, and barbed with the sting of the ray-fish; a wicked contrivance, for it was meant to break off from the spear in the body of the unhappy victim.
Purple mullet, variegated rock-fish, and small ray-fish, were darting about near the bottom. Another species of mullet, of a splendid changeable blue and green, seemed to be feeding upon the little polyps protruding from the coral tops.
The crown of the island prince was of the primitive old Eastern style; in shape, similar, perhaps, to that jauntily sported as a foraging cap by his sacred majesty King Nimrod, who so lustily followed the hounds. It was a plaited turban of red tappa, radiated by the pointed and polished white bones of the Ray-fish.
But by night his retinue is frequently increased by the presence of several small luminous fish, running in advance, and flourishing their flambeaux like link-boys lighting the monster's way. Pity there were no ray-fish in rear, page-like, to carry his caudal train.
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