22 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



was a glorious experience if one was a good sailor. 



The uses of the boom-walk proved to be mani- 

 fold, so much so, indeed, that the Captain came 

 to me one day to apologize for the scepticism which 

 he had shared with marine engineers and others in 

 the ship-yard where the weird contraption had been 

 made and attached. Trailing silk surface nets from 

 the extreme end of the boom-walk proved infinitely 

 more effective than the conventional method of 

 trailing them over the stern in the roiled and dis- 

 turbed wake. When we were anchored I was able 

 to use the outboard walk as an auxiliary boat 

 boom, or a place from which I could make a descent 

 in my diving helmet even at night. The sounding 

 davit was fixed half way out and we trolled for and 

 harpooned dolphin fish and sharks, besides using 

 it for photography, and catching up weed, fish and 

 organisms of all kind. In fact this, together with 

 the pulpit, increased our totality of effectiveness to 

 an astonishing degree. 



Among the host of creatures which we took in 

 quarts of plankton in our surface nets by day and 

 by night in the Sargasso Sea, one is especially 

 worthy of mention in this place. 



Leptocephalus is a general, ignorance-confessing 

 name given to the larval form of eels (Fig. 10). 

 My first introduction was when I looked at a small 

 aquarium of plankton and saw a half dozen mother- 

 of-pearl eyes swimming around quite by themselves. 

 This was after I had been studying plankton for 

 a few dozen hauls, and had passed the stage of 

 wondering whether excess of microscopic work was 



