CHAPTER III

THE DEMON OF THE REEF

The romance of coral has still to be written. There still exists a

widespread opinion that the coral reef and the coral island are the

work of an “insect.” This fabulous insect, accredited with the genius

of Brunel and the patience of Job, has been humorously enough held up

before the children of many generations as an example of industry—a

thing to be admired, a model to be followed.

As a matter of fact, nothing could be more slothful or slow, more given

up to a life of ease and degeneracy, than the “reef-building

polypifer”—to give him his scientific name. He is the hobo of the

animal world, but, unlike the hobo, he does not even tramp for a

living. He exists as a sluggish and gelatinous worm; he attracts to

himself calcareous elements from the water to make himself a

house—mark you, the sea does the building—he dies, and he leaves his

house behind him—and a reputation for industry, beside which the

reputation of the ant turns pale, and that of the bee becomes of little

account.

On a coral reef you are treading on rock that the reef-building

polypifers of ages have left behind them as evidences of their idle and

apparently useless lives. You might fancy that the reef is formed of

dead rock, but it is not: that is where the wonder of the thing comes

in—a coral reef is half alive. If it were not, it would not resist the

action of the sea ten years. The live part of the reef is just where

the breakers come in and beyond. The gelatinous rock-building

polypifers die almost at once, if exposed to the sun or if left

uncovered by water.

Sometimes, at very low tide, if you have courage enough to risk being

swept 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 and

masses of what seems rock, but which is a honeycomb of coral, whose

cells are filled with the living polypifers. Those in the uppermost

cells are usually dead, but lower down they are living.

Always dying, always being renewed, devoured by fish, attacked by the

sea—that is the life of a coral reef. It is a thing as living as a

cabbage or a tree. Every storm tears a piece off the reef, which the

living coral replaces; wounds occur in it which actually granulate and

heal as wounds do of the human body.

There is nothing, perhaps, more mysterious in nature than this fact of

the existence of a living land: a land that repairs itself, when

injured, by vital processes, and resists the eternal attack of the sea

by vital force, especially when we think of the extent of some of these

lagoon islands or atolls, whose existences are an eternal battle with

the waves.

Unlike the island of this story (which is an island surrounded by a

barrier reef of coral surrounding a space of sea—the lagoon), the reef

forms the island. The reef may be grown over by trees, or it may be

perfectly destitute of important vegetation, or it may be crusted with

islets. Some islets may exist within the lagoon, but as often as not it

is just a great empty lake floored with sand and coral, peopled with

life different to the life of the outside ocean, protected from the

waves, and reflecting the sky like a mirror.

When we remember that the atoll is a living thing, an organic whole, as

full of life, though not so highly organised, as a tortoise, the

meanest imagination must be struck with the immensity of one of the

structures.

Vliegen atoll in the Low Archipelago, measured from lagoon edge to

lagoon edge, is sixty miles long by twenty miles broad, at its broadest

part. In the Marshall Archipelago, Rimsky Korsacoff is fifty-four miles

long and twenty miles broad; and Rimsky Korsacoff is a living thing,

secreting, excreting, and growing—more highly organised than the

cocoa-nut trees that grow upon its back, or the blossoms that powder

the hotoo trees in its groves.

The story of coral is the story of a world, and the longest chapter in

that story concerns itself with coral’s infinite variety and form.

Out on the margin of the reef where Dick was spearing fish, you might

have seen a peach-blossom-coloured lichen on the rock. This lichen was

a form of coral. Coral growing upon coral, and in the pools at the edge

of the surf branching corals also of the colour of a peach bloom.

Within a hundred yards of where Emmeline was sitting, the pools

contained corals of all colours, from lake-red to pure white, and the

lagoon behind her—corals of the quaintest and strangest forms.

Dick had speared several fish, and had left them lying on the reef to

be 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 somewhat

of the same shape; they were a species of Bech de mer. Globe-shaped

jelly-fish as big as oranges, great cuttlefish bones flat and shining

and white, shark’s teeth, spines of echini; sometimes a dead scarus

fish, its stomach distended with bits of coral on which it had been

feeding; crabs, sea urchins, sea-weeds of strange colour and shape;

star-fish, some tiny and of the colour of cayenne pepper, some huge and

pale. These and a thousand other things, beautiful or strange, were to

be 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 when

he was suddenly seized by the foot. It was just as if his ankle had

been suddenly caught in a clove hitch and the rope drawn tight. He

screamed out with pain and terror, and suddenly and viciously a

whip-lash shot out from the water, lassoed him round the left knee,

drew itself taut, and held him.