Before this was finished the rains set in again and continued for a whole week. I concluded that the annual rainy season must now be at hand. For though the sky would occasionally clear for a day or part of a day, the showers were so frequent that the house grew damp and unwholesome, and I was obliged to air it every day with a rousing fire in the fireplace, the heat of which drove me to seek shelter under the work-shed. The weather was so uncertain that I did not dare to venture out in the boat further than a few hundred feet, and then with a line fast to the shore; this I occasionally did for the purpose of fishing, and always with good luck, catching the red snappers, rock cod, and various other varieties, all of which found their way to the larder.
It was on one of these occasions that I tried my new-made contrivance, the water-glass. When the closed end of this was submerged over the side of the boat, by looking in at the open upper end I could plainly see the bottom and the fish swimming about my hook. Of course I was very anxious to try the apparatus in deeper water to ascertain how far the vision could penetrate. But the weather would not render it possible without too great risk. The value of such a device would depend entirely upon the clearness and depth of the water. I knew from written accounts that the sponge fishers use a similar contrivance,--frequently a wooden bucket with a pane of glass in the bottom, which they call a “sponge glass,” and with which they search for sponges and conch shells in the Bermudas, employing it with perfect success, in clear water, even at a considerable depth. The sponge glass enables the operator to overcome the surface agitation and reflection of the water, just as a thin transparent sheet of ice sometimes renders the bottom of a deep pond visible to a skater.
One morning, when there was an almost perfect calm, I noticed on the surface of the sea a long streak extending from a point about half a mile from shore away toward the eastern horizon until it was lost in the distance. This appearance was so curious and inexplicable that after gazing at it for a while, both from the beach and from the top of a palm, I finally rowed the boat out to it, and found that it was muddy water, with leaves, grass, and vegetation floating in it, and a great number of cocoanuts bobbing about among the other fragments and detritus. It looked precisely as though the contents of some slack water lagoon connecting with the sea had been suddenly swept out by a freshet or some extraordinary current. Among the floating matter were innumerable sea beans, as they are called,--a sort of nut or seed that is sometimes used as an ornament for watch chains,--also little scarlet, egg-shaped seeds, like those that are picked up in such quantities on the Florida beaches. But there was no sea-weed with the other detritus. This mass of matter slowly travelled along the surface and by the next day was out of sight. I suppose to a more skilled observer the phenomenon might have proven a valuable aid in determining the set of the currents, or other natural facts worthy of note.