BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



hose has become entangled with the rope, and my 

 consequent hurried respiration does not help the 

 air supply. I lean slightly over and the water in 

 my helmet rises and splashes in my face. My 

 muscles, for a moment of panic, start me nervously 

 up the rope, then sanity resumes charge and I 

 turn back to secure some evidence of my having 

 reached bottom. I squat down, breathing as 

 quietly as possible, and through the lime-filled 

 murk I make out a scraggy sponge crag. I loosen 

 it with my foot, and then, reaching down, tear it 

 off and tuck it inside my belt, for I must have both 

 hands free to climb, and to untwist the hose. 

 Before I dehelm I hold up the sponge for safe keep- 

 ing and as soon as I reach the deck, submerge it 

 in an aquarium. 



The afternoon sun was pouring into my deck 

 laboratory window when I placed a tiny bit of the 

 black sponge under my microscope, and lost my- 

 self. There, stretching before me, lay slope after 

 slope of brown downs, occasionally rising into a 

 small, sharp hillock, and everywhere pitted with 

 holes. If it had been ploughed and gashed, it 

 would have been the terrible volcanic wastes of 

 Albermarle, but here instead, were mountain slopes 

 collandered with innumerable gopher holes. With- 

 in my field of view were two oblong caves, etched 

 deeply into the hills, and from these the perforated 

 expanses swept downward into the awful gulfs of 

 out-of-focusness. Having surveyed my penny- 

 wide landscape, my eye settled to details, and 



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