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In the seas around Ceylon sword-fishes sometimes attain to the length of twenty feet, and are distinguished by the unusual height of the dorsal fin. Those both of the Atlantic and Mediterranean possess this fin in its full proportions, only during the earlier stages of their growth.
A sword-fish running his sword through one of the glass windows, and perhaps coming in himself along with the water, sent a chill down her back every time she thought about it and talked about it. "You needn't be afraid of sword-fishes," said Captain Jim Hubbell. "They don't fancy the cold water we are sailin' in; and as to whales, don't you know, madam, there ain't no more of 'em?"
In the sea itself all manner of fish are found; the great sharks, with their shapeless gashes of mouth set with the fine keen teeth; the sword-fishes with their barred weapons seven and eight feet long; the stinging ray, shaped like a child's kite, with its rasping hide and its two sharp bony prickers set on its long tail; the handsome tĕnggîri, marked like a mackerel, the first of which when taken are a royal perquisite on the Coast; the little smelts and red-fish; the thousand varieties that live among the sunken rocks, and are brought to the surface by lines six fathoms long; the cray-fish, prawns, and shrimps; and the myriad forms of semi-vegetable life that find a home in the tepid tropic sea, all these, and many more for which we have no name, live and die and prey upon each other along the eastern shores of the Peninsula.
As soon as the back of the black-fish appeared above the surface, the thresher, springing several yards out of the water, descended with great violence on the object of its rancour and inflicted what sounded like a hearty slap with its tail, the sword-fishes in their turn striking the whale from below; so that, try how he might, the unhappy monster of the deep could not escape his persevering foes.
It tells us that a sea, some 500 or 600 feet deep, then lay over that part of England, and fragments of the life of the period are preserved in its deposit. The sea lay at the mouth of a sub-tropical river on whose banks grew palms, figs, ginkgoes, eucalyptuses, almonds, and magnolias, with the more familiar oaks and pines and laurels. Sword-fishes and monstrous sharks lived in the sea.
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