On our way we passed numerous small coral patches, and others were afterwards found to the westward, running in irregular lines, and partially blocking up the passage inside the barrier, which it was expected would have been found clear.
CHANGEABLE WEATHER.
We remained here for five days, during which period we had much variety of weather--sometimes blowing hard from East-South-East to East-North-East with squalls and thick gloomy weather--at other times nearly a calm, the air disagreeably close and muggy, the temperature varying from 75 to 85 degrees, with occasional heavy rain.
SUCKING-FISH AND SHARK.
Small fish appeared to abound at this anchorage.

I had never before seen the sucking-fish (Echeneis remora) so plentiful as at this place; they caused much annoyance to our fishermen by carrying off baits and hooks, and appeared always on the alert, darting out in a body of twenty or more from under the ship's bottom when any offal was thrown overboard.

Being quite a nuisance, and useless as food, Jack often treated them as he would a shark, by spritsail-yarding, or some still less refined mode of torture.

One day some of us while walking the poop had our attention directed to a sucking-fish about two and a half feet in length which had been made fast by the tail to a billet of wood by a fathom or so of spun yarn, and turned adrift.

An immense striped shark, apparently about fourteen feet in length, which had been cruising about the ship all the morning, sailed slowly up, and, turning slightly on one side, attempted to seize the apparently helpless fish, but the sucker, with great dexterity, made himself fast in a moment to the shark's back--off darted the monster at full speed--the sucker holding on fast as a limpet to a rock, and the billet towing astern.