midnight
The natives could do nothing for me , but said that the pain would moderate before morning , especially if the fish was dead . Had its fins struck into my foot instead of my hand I should have died , they asserted ; and then they told the mate and myself that one day a mischievous boy who had speared one of these abominable fish threw it at a young woman who was standing some distance away . It struck her on the foot , the spines penetrating a vein , and the poor girl died in terrible agony on the following day . By midnight the pain I was enduring began to moderate , though my hand and arm were swollen to double the proper size , and a splitting headache kept me awake till daylight . The shock to the system affected me for quite a week afterward . During many subsequent visits to the Marshall Group our crews were always cautioned by the people of the various islands about eating fish or shell-fish without submitting them to local examination . In the Radack chain of this widely spread out archipelago we found that the lagoons were comparatively free from poisonous fish , while the Ralick lagoons were infested with them , quite 30 per cent , being highly dangerous at all times of the year , and nearly 50 per cent at other seasons .