CHAPTER III
THE DEMON OF THE REEF
The romance of coral has still to be written. There still exists awidespread opinion that the coral reef and the coral island are thework of an “insect.” This fabulous insect, accredited with the geniusof Brunel and the patience of Job, has been humorously enough held upbefore the children of many generations as an example of industry—athing to be admired, a model to be followed.
As a matter of fact, nothing could be more slothful or slow, more givenup to a life of ease and degeneracy, than the “reef-buildingpolypifer”—to give him his scientific name. He is the hobo of theanimal world, but, unlike the hobo, he does not even tramp for aliving. He exists as a sluggish and gelatinous worm; he attracts tohimself calcareous elements from the water to make himself ahouse—mark you, the sea does the building—he dies, and he leaves hishouse behind him—and a reputation for industry, beside which thereputation of the ant turns pale, and that of the bee becomes of littleaccount.
On a coral reef you are treading on rock that the reef-buildingpolypifers of ages have left behind them as evidences of their idle andapparently useless lives. You might fancy that the reef is formed ofdead rock, but it is not: that is where the wonder of the thing comesin—a coral reef is half alive. If it were not, it would not resist theaction of the sea ten years. The live part of the reef is just wherethe breakers come in and beyond. The gelatinous rock-buildingpolypifers die almost at once, if exposed to the sun or if leftuncovered by water.
Sometimes, at very low tide, if you have courage enough to risk beingswept away by the breakers, going as far out on the reef as you can,you may catch a glimpse of them in their living state—great mounds andmasses of what seems rock, but which is a honeycomb of coral, whosecells are filled with the living polypifers. Those in the uppermostcells are usually dead, but lower down they are living.
Always dying, always being renewed, devoured by fish, attacked by thesea—that is the life of a coral reef. It is a thing as living as acabbage or a tree. Every storm tears a piece off the reef, which theliving coral replaces; wounds occur in it which actually granulate andheal as wounds do of the human body.
There is nothing, perhaps, more mysterious in nature than this fact ofthe existence of a living land: a land that repairs itself, wheninjured, by vital processes, and resists the eternal attack of the seaby vital force, especially when we think of the extent of some of theselagoon islands or atolls, whose existences are an eternal battle withthe waves.
Unlike the island of this story (which is an island surrounded by abarrier reef of coral surrounding a space of sea—the lagoon), the reefforms the island. The reef may be grown over by trees, or it may beperfectly destitute of important vegetation, or it may be crusted withislets. Some islets may exist within the lagoon, but as often as not itis just a great empty lake floored with sand and coral, peopled withlife different to the life of the outside ocean, protected from thewaves, and reflecting the sky like a mirror.
When we remember that the atoll is a living thing, an organic whole, asfull of life, though not so highly organised, as a tortoise, themeanest imagination must be struck with the immensity of one of thestructures.
Vliegen atoll in the Low Archipelago, measured from lagoon edge tolagoon edge, is sixty miles long by twenty miles broad, at its broadestpart. In the Marshall Archipelago, Rimsky Korsacoff is fifty-four mileslong and twenty miles broad; and Rimsky Korsacoff is a living thing,secreting, excreting, and growing—more highly organised than thecocoa-nut trees that grow upon its back, or the blossoms that powderthe hotoo trees in its groves.
The story of coral is the story of a world, and the longest chapter inthat story concerns itself with coral’s infinite variety and form.
Out on the margin of the reef where Dick was spearing fish, you mighthave seen a peach-blossom-coloured lichen on the rock. This lichen wasa form of coral. Coral growing upon coral, and in the pools at the edgeof the surf branching corals also of the colour of a peach bloom.
Within a hundred yards of where Emmeline was sitting, the poolscontained corals of all colours, from lake-red to pure white, and thelagoon behind her—corals of the quaintest and strangest forms.
Dick had speared several fish, and had left them lying on the reef tobe picked up later on. Tired of killing, he was now wandering along,examining the various living things he came across.
Huge slugs inhabited the reef, slugs as big as parsnips, and somewhatof the same shape; they were a species of Bech de mer. Globe-shapedjelly-fish as big as oranges, great cuttlefish bones flat and shiningand white, shark’s teeth, spines of echini; sometimes a dead scarusfish, its stomach distended with bits of coral on which it had beenfeeding; crabs, sea urchins, sea-weeds of strange colour and shape;star-fish, some tiny and of the colour of cayenne pepper, some huge andpale. These and a thousand other things, beautiful or strange, were tobe found on the reef.
Dick had laid his spear down, and was exploring a deep bath-like pool.He had waded up to his knees, and was in the act of wading further whenhe was suddenly seized by the foot. It was just as if his ankle hadbeen suddenly caught in a clove hitch and the rope drawn tight. Hescreamed out with pain and terror, and suddenly and viciously awhip-lash shot out from the water, lassoed him round the left knee,drew itself taut, and held him.