Page:A La California.djvu/98

74 swam down in a line to within twenty or thirty yards of us, and looked at us with their great lustrous brown eyes, whether in sorrow or in anger we could not tell, until I hit one on his head, and as the bullet glanced off, he disappeared with a grunt and porpoise-like plunge. Thompson took the pistol, and as one rose again fired and hit him squarely in the mouth. He shook his head from side to side, as if blind with pain, and then went down, leaving great dark spots in the water. They all started off then southward, and I was not sorry. Inveterate sportsman that I have been from my youth up, I cannot get over the feeling that the killing of defenseless creatures like these, and allowing their bodies to rot on the beach, is something akin to murder.

The rocks we stood on, and which are covered at high tide, were incrusted with mussels of immense size. Some of them measure twelve inches in length, and Thompson tells me that he has seen them fifteen inches long. They are fat and luscious, and a few epicures come down to the coast every season to indulge in clam-bakes and mussel-roasts; but this species of shell-fish is so common, and consequently cheap, that not one in ten of the people of California ever eat them. In holes in the rocks, filled with pure sea-water, we saw curious things like great sunflowers with bright-green petals. These we could not detach from the rocks, and at one touch they would curl up into a slippery ball with all the petals hidden inside.

We went back to our boat as the tide came