The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries Part 31

Accordingly, Colin and the diver went out with Early Bird every day for a week, Colin spending the entire day peering through the water gla.s.s for perfect specimens, which, when sighted, the diver would descend to get. He secured an especially fine example of a long-spined black and white striped sea-urchin, with spines nearly seven inches in length, a number of pale-blue starfish (an unusual color in that genus), and one superb sea-fan of a glowing purple color nearly five feet across. Of sea-anemones he found a large variety, and those he brought to the aquarium, where Mr. Collier was working steadily; several kinds of "sea-puddings," closely allied to the famous beche-de-mer--the table delicacy of China--also were within his discoveries. The boy's eyesight was keen, and the collecting fever found him an easy victim, but it was back-breaking work to stoop over the water gla.s.s all day.

After about a week of this, however, a surprise awaited him. He noticed, as they sailed into the bay, a very handsome steam yacht lying at anchor, a sea-going craft flying the New York Yacht Club's burgee. On his return to the hotel Colin found his chief waiting for him, a little impatiently.

"We're going to dinner on the _Golden Falcon_," he said, as soon as he saw the boy, "she belongs to a friend of mine. He is going down to Florida and has offered to take us along. If I can arrange it, that will save us at least a week's time."

"Bully, fine!" Colin exclaimed. "Is that the yacht down there?"

"Yes."

"She's a beauty. All right, Mr. Collier, I'll get ready just as fast as I can. And you ought to see a feather star I got to-day. It wasn't so awfully deep down either."

"I'll see it later," was the reply, "hurry and get ready now; I don't want to be late going over there. Their launch is to come at half-past six and it is twenty after now, so that you need to move as fast as you know how."

"Right, sir," answered Colin, and off he sped.

The yacht was the finest of its kind that the boy had ever boarded and he spent a very pleasant evening, the more so as the owner of the vessel had his family aboard, including his son Paul, a lad almost the same age as Colin. Mr. Murren was a wealthy capitalist, who had financed a chain of drug-stores throughout the country and still kept a large amount of stock in them. This corporation used many thousands of sponges annually, needing moreover a high-grade article which was found difficult to procure. It had been thought wise to investigate the question of buying a sponge farm, and he had been asked to look into the matter.

Accordingly, he was taking a run down the coast, but had come first to see the American Vice Consul at Bermuda--to whom he was related by marriage.

"I heard a good deal about that sponge-farming business," said Colin, when the other boy told him this. "Dr. Crafts told me how it was worked."

"All the more reason for you to join us," his new friend responded. "I hope you're coming."

"I hope so, too," Colin answered, "and it's likely enough that we will, since you say your father has been kind enough to ask us. I think Mr.

Collier has nearly finished what he wanted to do in Bermuda, and if you are going straight to Florida, it would save us a lot of time, as well as being a jolly trip in itself."

"Going to do more coral-hunting?" the other boy queried, for Colin had told him about his Bermuda work.

"A little of that, I think; but I believe Mr. Collier intends also to make an exhibit showing the way sponges grow. So you see he is as much interested as your father in reviewing the sponge question."

At this juncture Colin heard his name called.

"Yes, Mr. Collier," he answered.

"Do you think you have been over most of the reef?"

"Yes, sir, I think so," the boy answered; "Early Bird said yesterday that we had covered the sea-garden grounds fairly thoroughly. But, of course, there are miles of reef that we haven't seen."

"I think, Mr. Murren," the scientist said, turning to his host, "that I can finish up all my business here by to-morrow night and be ready for a start the following morning. If that's agreeable to you, we shall be very glad to accept your invitation."

"That's agreed, then," said the capitalist, "and now we'll have some music."

The trip to Florida on the _Golden Falcon_ was one of the pleasantest Colin had ever known. The little craft fairly flew through the water. He liked his host and hostess immensely, both of whom were accomplished musicians, and he struck up quite a friendship with Paul. The capitalist's son, though but a month or two younger than Colin, was quite inclined to give the latter a little hero-worship. And it was significant of Colin's make-up that he was equally ready to take it.

Little of note occurred on the voyage save that the yacht almost ran over a sunfish in the water, which turned a sluggish somersault and disappeared. What was of more interest to Colin and indeed to Paul also was the opportunity to use a very powerful microscope belonging to the museum curator and to find out about the almost invisible life of the ocean.

"You must remember," the scientist told them, "that these tiny forms, which look like the most wonderful figures in a fairyland of geometry, exist in such billions that as they die, their light sh.e.l.ls fall through the sea like a perpetual rain. Some of them, too, are so very light that it takes them a month to sink to the bottom."

"But what can such tiny bits of things live on, Mr. Collier?" asked Paul; "other animals smaller still?"

"No, my boy," was the reply, "on plants called diatoms. There are over four thousand species of these plants known, which are so small that the microscopic animals readily engulf them. Where it is too cold for surface animal life, as in the Antarctic Ocean, these dead diatoms form the mud on the bottom of the ocean, and in the extremely deep parts, the sea-bed is red clay, but most of it is an 'ooze'--'Globigerina,' as it is called--made up of the sh.e.l.ls of those very creatures you have now been seeing on that microscope slide. You drop in and see me at New York, boys," he added kindly, "and I'll show you some models I have made of them."

On arrival at Key West one of the first things that impressed itself upon Colin was the sponge wharf, where tens of thousands of sponges of every sort were drying in the hot September sun. The conversation had run upon sponges very frequently during the voyage, and Mr. Collier, who knew the subject thoroughly from a theoretical point of view, had been of great help to his host. But the economic and commercial side of the question was another matter. From this aspect Colin found that the remembrance of his conversation with Dr. Crafts in Washington stood him in good stead.

"As I understand it, Mr. Murren," he said, as they stood on the wharf together, waiting for an approaching boat, "the government looks on the business of growing sponges much as it does on the growing of wheat or any other form of farming, only it is called aquiculture instead of agriculture. Sponge planting isn't so very different from potato planting."

"It looks entirely different to me," the boy's host replied, as he went down the wharf steps. "I'm sorry Mr. Collier was called away this afternoon, but I may as well give a preliminary look over this sponge-farming business and you boys might as well come along. There's a man here who wants me to buy his sponge farm. Since Mr. Collier is here I'm not going to decide anything without his advice. He doesn't want you this afternoon, does he?"

Colin hesitated a moment.

"Not as far as I know, Mr. Murren," he answered.

"I wish you would come, then," urged the capitalist. "You've picked up some ideas in Washington which may be of help."

"I'll be glad to come, if you feel I'm any use to you," the boy replied, flattered at this evidence that he could be of service, "I was only afraid that I'd be in the way."

Colin followed Paul and his father into the boat, where was waiting a negro as black as the proverbial black hat, a local fisherman who had taken up sponge growing, and who, while shrewd enough for a business deal, knew little about sponges.

"You were saying that the Bureau of Fisheries is going to take up sponge-farming?" the prospective buyer asked. "Do you know what success the government has had so far?"

"Enough to show that it can be done and that's about all," the boy replied. "Before long, I think, the Bureau will have a station down on the Keys here and that will be one of the first questions they will probably take up. As I heard it put, the Bureau aims to farm every acre of water as thoroughly as every acre of land."

"That," said the capitalist, "is an ideal that gives all sorts of chances for development."

Presently the boatman stopped and, resting on his oars, said:

"Lots o' sponges hyeh, boss."

The would-be buyer took the water gla.s.s and looked through it at the bottom, but he was unaccustomed to the appearance of growing sponges and also to the use of a water gla.s.s, so that he gained little from it.

"I don't see any," he said.

"Aren't there any round liver-colored lumps, Mr. Murren?" the boy asked.

"Yes, there are lots of those," was the reply.

"Those are sponges."

"They don't look like it."

"They are, sir, though. A skeleton doesn't ever look just like a man.

The sponge, as you use it in a bath, is just an animal's skeleton, or it may be of several animals that have grown together."

"Yo' suah o' that, boss?" asked the boatman. "I allus hear' dat a sponge was a plant--not any animal."

"It's an animal," Colin said shortly.

"But I thought," interjected Paul, "that the difference between a plant and an animal was that an animal can move around and a plant can't."

"Well, Paul," the boy answered, "the young of sponges are larvae which swim in the water by threshing with short hairs until they find something suitable to stick on. Lots of animals which become fixtures are free-swimming when young, oysters, for instance."