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As he lived a long time out of the water, I tried experiments on the weight he could carry before the blades of the disk loosened from the plank to which the animal was fixed; but I lost that part of my journal. It is doubtless the fear of danger that causes the remora not to loose his hold when he feels that he is pulled by a cord or by the hand of man.

He makes two great sheets of water rise and fall. Probably all these fish leap to shake off the remoras. A remora is a parasite, a queer little fish, pale in color, because he probably lives inside the gills of the fish he preys upon, with the suckers on top of his head, arranged in a shield, ribbed like a washboard. This little fish is as mysterious as any creature of the sea.

I saw a remora, a little fish called echineis by the Greeks, and near it a tall ship that did not get ahead an inch, though she was in the offing with top and top-gallants spread before the wind. I am somewhat inclined to believe that 'twas the very numerical ship in which Periander the tyrant happened to be when it was stopped by such a little fish in spite of wind and tide.

I also found a small remora, or sucking fish, near his tail, but when I put it to my mouth, it fixed itself so firmly on both my lips that I thought they were sealed for ever. No force could detach it, and there it hung like a padlock for many hours, to my great mortification and annoyance, but at last it died from being so long out of water, and when it dropped off I devoured it.

But, fast as the Remora stole forward, the Firedrake came quicker yet, flying and clashing his fiery wings. At last they were within striking distance; and the Firedrake, stooping from the air, dashed with his burning horns and flaming feet slap into the body of the Remora.

These concoctions were publicly sold at Rome, their ingredients consisting of herbs of various kinds, in the culling and testing of which the shepherds were often employed. The remora, or sucking-fish, certain bones of the frog, the astroit, or star-fish, and the hippomanes were also used.

"There spoke all Fairport in one voice!" exclaimed Oldbuck "it is the very spirit of the borough has infected us all; I think I have smelled the smoke these two days, that the wind has stuck, like a remora, in the north-east and its prejudices fly farther than its vapours.

There they were in a moment, among the old knights whom, if you remember, the Remora had frozen into stone. There was quite a troop of them, in all sorts of armour Greek and Roman, and Knight Templars like Front de Boeuf and Brian du Bois Gilbert all the brave warriors that had tried to fight the Remora since the world began.

You will find now and then in the newspapers, stories they may be true or false about caterpillars stopping a train. There is an old legend of that fabulous creature the remora, a tiny thing that fastened itself to the keel of a ship, and arrested it in mid-ocean. That is what we do with God and His purposes, and with His power granted to us. A low expectation limits the power.

Encouraged by this advice, the white, slippery Remora streamed out of his cavern again, more and more of him uncoiling, as if the mountain were quite full of him. He had lost strength, no doubt: for the steam and mist went up from him in clouds, and the hissing of his angry voice grew fainter; but so did the roars of the Firedrake.