NO-MAN'S-LAND FIVE FATHOMS DOWN 



streaked for the most distant point in the world. 

 But he was not versed in retreat and retraced 

 his own wake to the very corner. The two little 

 people of the sea were oblivious to everything 

 except one another, but soon it dawned on the 

 parrot that he was racing into a cul-de-sac, and 

 putting his tail hard a-port he swung out, thus 

 avoiding the sharp angle of the coral and gorgonia, 

 and setting his course toward the center of the 

 sea-fan. The butterflyfish, a short distance to the 

 rear, at once followed suit and both soon vanished 

 from sight, but not before, five fathoms deep, they 

 had re-enacted the two soldiers fleeing along the 

 walls of Troy. Here, in mid-water was drawn 

 for me, the wonderful tractrix itself, and now my 

 eye wandered back, and it seemed very reasonable 

 that it was the lines of some similarly marvellous 

 curve which gave solution to the eminent satis- 

 factoriness of the great sponge font before me. 

 I was still in the canyon of brain corals and lean- 

 ing upon one, I could look across at a half dozen 

 others, appearing for all the world like a cluster of 

 African huts in a tree-shadowed kraal. The 

 wandering lines and paths of this well-named 

 Maeandrina coral recalled the furrowed, rain- 

 worn gullies and terraced slopes of the western 

 Himalayas. From the crevices between mounds 

 sprouted tall, waving shrubs of horny coral, sea- 

 plumes, not only aping vegetation but reversing 

 the manner of plants. One long branch which 

 waved across my helmet-glass was deep furred 



43 



