Morning journal and courier., 1889-03-18

UcShu GO quiA Guo kcublc1uduly yOuAS AcAAo" in charge of the lift.
 '.Been getting married, heara" he inquired grufiy.
 "Yes, {" answered the lad, while fiery lur- i'd crimson sufused his cheek; "yes, sir"
 "House furnished?"
 "Yes, sir: pretty we'll"
 "Carpets"
 "Yes, sir"
 'sStove?n
 "We have an old one that will do pretty well.''
 MT. Gould stepped off here, and the next day the young housekeeper's wife was thrown into convulsioDs of happiness by the appear ance of 8 superb base-burner.
 The Dev1i-Fish.
 From the London Illustrated News.l
 As Her Majesty's ship Comus lay at an- chor in Eiigh Harbor Anaigua, the little barrel-like buoy that marks the place of the anchor, to which it is fastened by four inch rope. was observed to plunge about and splash, diving under the water and disap- bearing. Reports of this unseemly behavior of our buoy were conveyed to the officers, who treated them with the cautious suspic- ion that such an unlikely story seemed to deserve. By 1 o'clock in the afternoon, when the buoy had danced for an hour and half and seemed to require some looking after. The cause of the disturbance was then manifest. huge devil-fsh had got foul of
  away about sin feet below the surface of the water with two good turns of the rope around one of his mouth fins, as l may call them for want of better name.
 He was secured with sharp hook by gallant midshipman, and was then har- pooned; the rope in which he was entangled was cut, and he was slowly lowed alongside and was hoisted inboard.
 When he was laid on deck we had an am pie opportunity of admiring his vast pro- portions. He was not Ca thick of beauty" but overlapping monster of the deep. There lay the great fish, like a giant black bat, with his huge wings extended on the deck, measuring across, from to tip, 16 feet inches. The other dimensions were: breadth of mouth Horizontally, feet length from head to end of tail, 12 feet 8 inches; length of tail alone, 5 feet. But it was puzzle at first to find out where his mouth was placed.
 s'I have it, sir," cried blueiacket in great gtee; 'tand, what is more, he has fish in it his dinner is therel" AS he spoke he opened pair of great black lips; rather to one side of the fish, I thought; and below these lips was white cavity, large enough to contain ones head. And there was a fish, sure enough, ipside 1t, but this little fish was alive; he bounced out, fish the size of small herring, and skipped furious- ly about the deck between our feet There were more wonders presently, when another bluejacket found another mouth, with an- other fish in it, alive and we'll, and this fish, too, came out and skipped on deck between our legs. Then it dawned upon us that these small fishes could never have been eaten by the big devil-fsh; and further ex- animation showed that each of them had flat plate on the back of it's head; it looked as if it had held on to something by this sucker" and it proved that so they do. We put them in bucket of water, and they hung on to the side of it with the back of their heads go vigorously that the hardest pull could not shift their position. much less dislodge them; though, when the bucket was emptied, they came off its side at a touch. The small fishes had clung to the devil-fsh as his parasites; not feeding on him, for they had left no mark behind, but using him for their travelling haDitation. The cavities in which they lodged were his nostrils. Meanwhile, we discovered the real mouth of the devil-fsh, three feet across, lying between these cavities. This enormous mouth is quite toothless; the devil fish sucks down his food one would an oyster. What is his food, I cannot tell; for after I had finished sketching him, and before had well begun dissecting him, orders were given to heave him overheard, as he was making the deck filthy with the streams of blood that continued to flow from his dead body.
 Stories have been told of the devil-6sh, taking luckless swimmer between his great fins, folding hin in deadly embrace and sinking with him to the depths below; and this may be true enough; but the Manta Diabolus, or Manta Birostris, as he is seien- ti6cally called, is said to feed only on sea- weed. At the same time, he is troublesome and even dangerous, fond of meddling with the mooring Of fshermen's boats, as he did with our moorings. and setting them adrift, and when pursued a favorite pastime, when they were more plantiful, at Port Royal-turning upon the boats, and, if not quickly dispatched, eapsizing them. I have often seen these fish leap out of the water an smazing sight-on the coast of Venezuela, where they are common, and grow to the size of twenty feet broad.
 In the scene represented by my sketch, when the order to throw the monster over- board has been given, it is promptly obeyed. Eighty men strain at the ropes; the fish, whose weight may be a ton, slowly rises and swings round, presenting very odd and even astonishing spectacle. Over the sea he hangs for moment; the word is giv- en, "Let go"; then down he falls with a crash, disappears in a cloud of foam and =. oEE E1 so1