32 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



double handful in a dish of water and find that 

 most of the animals are not damaged. It appears 

 incredible that the contact with the net and the im- 

 pact of the water on the upward journey should 

 not crush all but the largest and toughest. 



There was an excited shout from the dark-room 

 that caused a stampede in that direction. In the 

 nearly total blackness of that very inaccessible com- 

 partment, streaks and gleams and sparks of glow- 

 ing light moved slowly and erratically about. In 

 the babble of questions from a dozen people who 

 were tripping over each other in the dark, I shouted 

 out, 



'' Astr-onesthes and Oneirodes!" 



This was not an ancient Grecian oath, but the 

 names of two luminous deep-sea fishes that were 

 nobly gratifying the hope with which they had been 

 hurried into the dark-room. Brought up from a 

 region where the pressure on their small bodies 

 was hundreds of pounds to the square inch, into an 

 unfamiliar zone where it amounted to only fifteen 

 pounds, it was marvellous that they lived to reach 

 the surface, to say nothing of continuing to exist 

 long enough to show those little lights which up to 

 this moment had been gliding about the cold black- 

 ness of the great depths. 



Both of these particular ones were velvety black 

 of skin. Astronestlics was rather slim and long- 

 bodied, witl) a slender tentacle trailing from its 

 chin, which, to my surprise, was delicately lumin- 

 ous down its entire length, only the thickened tip 

 showing no light. This very fish we later captured 



