While sitting down taking our luncheon, we observed a snake crawling along out of the grass, and wriggling his way towards the sea.  For what he went there I do not know.  He had better have kept away.  Just as he got below high-water mark, out darted from the crevice of a rock a huge crab, and seized him by the nape of the neck.  The snake wriggled, and twisted, and tried to free himself in vain.  Mr Crab held tight hold of him, and seemed resolved to eat him up.  Poor Snakie tried to get his tail round a bit of rock, to keep himself out of the water; but Crabie pulled and hauled, and, in spite of all resistance, got him down to the very edge of the water, knowing that when once under it his struggles would very soon cease.  Crabs have, however, to learn the lesson that there is many a slip between the catch and the feast.  A frigate bird had from afar espied the combat, and, flying like a flash of lightning, downward he darted and seized the snake by the back.  The voracious crab held on, not liking to lose his prey, till he found himself borne upwards from the ground, and in unpleasant propinquity to the frigate bird's sharp beak.  He must have felt that if he did not let go at once, he would be dashed to pieces; still, as a miser clutches his bags of gold, did Mr Crab the snake.  Fortunately for him, the frigate bird had flown seaward, so that when he did let go, he fell into the water, and, probably, however his temper might have suffered, he was not much the worse for the ducking.  Had he fallen on the rock, he would inevitably have had his shell broken, and would himself have become the prey of the pirate.