We approached the surface of the sea rapidly.
But this return to the upper strata was not so sudden as to cause relief
from the pressure too rapidly, which might have produced serious disorder
in our organisation, and brought on internal lesions, so fatal to divers.
Very soon light reappeared and grew, and, the sun being low on the horizon,
the refraction edged the different objects with a spectral ring.
At ten yards and a half deep, we walked amidst a shoal of little fishes
of all kinds, more numerous than the birds of the air, and also more agile;
but no aquatic game worthy of a shot had as yet met our gaze, when at
that moment I saw the Captain shoulder his gun quickly, and follow
a moving object into the shrubs. He fired; I heard a slight hissing,
and a creature fell stunned at some distance from us. It was a magnificent
sea-otter, an enhydrus, the only exclusively marine quadruped.
This otter was five feet long, and must have been very valuable.
Its skin, chestnut-brown above and silvery underneath, would have made one
of those beautiful furs so sought after in the Russian and Chinese markets:
the fineness and the lustre of its coat would certainly fetch L80.
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