BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



More jellies came sailing down tide like an end- 

 less procession of pale moons. When they reached 

 the light they almost vanished, so close was their 

 body hue to that of the water. More and more 

 gathered, and to my surprise these Wanderers, 

 these merest Plankton, threw off their vegetative 

 helplessness and suddenly began to assert them- 

 selves as Nekton. My light gave them character 

 and will power so that when carried past they 

 actually turned up-current and umbrellaed their 

 way as close to the light as possible. Dozens of 

 others came slowly, ghostily, up from the deeps 

 and in less than a half hour the light was at the 

 heart of a solid, heaving mass of life. It might 

 have been some single, strange amorphous, breath- 

 ing being of the sea, rolling about at the side of the 

 schooner, even sending out an uncanny arm toward 

 one of the bobbing boats. There was now no 

 chance for any other kind of life about the light, 

 so I scooped up a pailful of the Aurelia jellies and 

 got thirty-one of good size. I took them up to 

 the laboratory table and switched off the search- 

 light. My nucleus had grown too solid, too 

 quickly. 



An hour later I again went on watch. Only two 

 Aurelias were in sight and these passed out to sea 

 without stopping. About the light the hosts of 

 tiny people of the sea began to color the water 

 with such delicate subtlety that the increase in 

 density might have been governed by an hour 

 hand's movement, — from clarity to mistiness, from 



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