SARGASSO WEEDS AND WAVES 21 



but I must mention the boom-walk before going on 

 to the deep-sea part of our typical Sargasso day. 

 When I saw the Arcturus in dry-dock the thought 

 came to me how much of a vessel is outside and how 

 little anyone has ever made use of it. I remem- 

 bered Howard Pyle's drawing of a pirate's cap- 

 tive walking the plank and I made up my mind 

 to adapt this to the uses of an oceanographic ex- 

 pedition. I fashioned two thirty-foot booms rigged 

 outboard on the port side, one slightly above the 

 other and about three feet apart. To these, by a 

 many-looped rope I laced a duckboard walk. When 

 swung at right angles to the vessel's side and firmly 

 guyed, I had a perfectly safe runway extending 

 far out from the ship and over quiet water, beyond 

 the foaming wave thrown up by the passage of the 

 Arcturus on her course. I could walk out in calm 

 or in storm and, from a curious, semi-detached 

 view-point, contemplate the ship plunging through 

 the water. One was of the vessel, and yet not 

 exactly in it nor on it, a state of mind which may 

 resemble that of a soul in its astral body looking 

 back upon its corporeal one. Searching for a name 

 that should express the feeling of this position, 

 we hit upon the Fourth Dimension as most appro- 

 priate. 



In the trough of a swell which looked incon- 

 siderable but felt mighty, the tip of the boom de- 

 scribed a great arc, swinging far up into the air 

 until one looked down from an appalling height 

 on the main deck, then swooping waveward with 

 such velocity that a salt bath seemed inevitable. It 



