in.

Like a spendthrift in the midst of a winning game, I still watched
eagerly and ungratefully for manatees. Kiskadees splashed rather than
flew through the drenched air, an invisible black witch bubbled
somewhere to herself, and a wren sang three notes and a trill which
died out in a liquid gurgle. Then came another crocodile, and finally
the manatees. Not only did they rise and splash and roll and
indolently flick themselves with their great flippers, but they stood
upright on their tails, like Alice's carpenter's companion, and one
fondled its young as a water-mamma should. Then the largest stretched
up as far as any manatee can ever leave the water, and caught and
munched a drooping sprig of bamboo. Watching the great puffing lips,
we again thought of walruses; but only a caterpillar could emulate
that sideways mumbling--the strangest mouth of any mammal. But from
behind, the rounded head, the shapely neck, the little baby manatee
held carefully in the curve of a flipper, made legends of mermaids
seem very reasonable; and if I had been an early _voyageur_, I should
assuredly have had stories to tell of mer-kiddies as well. As we
watched, the young one played about, slowly and deliberately, without
frisk or gambol, but determinedly, intently, as if realizing its duty
to an abstract conception of youth and warm-blooded mammalness.

The earth holds few breathing beings stranger than these manatees.
Their life is a slow progression through muddy water from one bed of
lilies or reeds to another. Every few minutes, day and night, year
after year, they come to the surface for a lungful of the air which
they must have, but in which they cannot live. In place of hands they
have flippers, which paddle them leisurely along, which also serve to
hold the infant manatee, and occasionally to scratch themselves when
leeches irritate. The courtship of sea-cows, the qualities which
appeal most to their dull minds, the way they protect the callow
youngsters from voracious crocodiles, how or where they sleep--of all
this we are ignorant. We belong to the same class, but the line
between water and air is a no man's land which neither of us can pass
for more than a few seconds.

When their big black hulks heaved slowly upward, it brought to my mind
the huge glistening backs of elephants bathing in Indian streams; and
this resemblance is not wholly fantastic. Not far from the oldest
Egyptian ruins, excavations have brought to light r