WHEN NIGHT COMES TO WATER 



For thirty-four nights, scattered through March 

 and April, we kept vigil with one or the other of 

 our lights, and watched and caught the creatures 

 which came. 



The light would be swung out gently from the 

 deck and lowered about two feet beneath the 

 surface. Then the great glow flashed out and 

 with jars and nets I would walk down the gang- 

 way ramp, and drape myself close to the water on 

 the small platform at the foot. 



There was something — some uncanny attraction 

 — which kept me squatting on the gang-way long 

 after the ship had gone to bed, withstanding 

 cramps and ignoring the green moons which danced 

 before my eyes after staring for hours toward the 

 blazing light. As far as I could make out, the 

 fascination was the illimitable sporting chance of 

 new and astounding visitors. My patch of watery 

 light was connected aquatically with the ends of 

 the earth and the deepest depths. From my hand 

 dabbling in the water there was direct H^O com- 

 munication with the Barrier Reef of Australia and 

 the farthest open leads off northern Greenland, — 

 with the jungle-stained fluid thousands of miles 

 up the Amazon, and with the crushing blackness 

 of the Nares Deep, five miles straight down, and 

 only three hundred miles from where I watched. 

 This geographical poetic flight would be that and 

 nothing more if my long, patient waits were not 

 occasionally leavened with actual amazing and 

 unbelievable people of the sea. 



79 



