44 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



Early on the morning of the third day we were 

 up ready for the Humboldt Current, for new deep 

 sea fish, for wonderful floating things — for any- 

 thing except what actually came to us. At seven- 

 thirty, after sounding, temperatures, and break- 

 fast, I went on the bridge and saw a very distinct 

 line in the water to the north. The captain said 

 we had been steaming parallel to it since dawn. 

 I had the Arcturus turned toward it at once, and 

 found the Sargasso Sea of the Pacific, only in this 

 instance it was a wall of water, against which all 

 the floating jetsam for miles and miles was drifted 

 and held. There came into my mind at once the 

 Humboldt Current, but I soon found that, most 

 astonishingly, that Antarctic river had nothing at 

 all to do with this gigantic Current Rip, which was 

 caused by the coming together of two warm, west- 

 wardly flowing streams of water. When we first 

 detected the rip we were in 2° 36' North Lati- 

 tude, and 85° West Longitude, which placed us 

 about two hundred miles southeast of Cocos Island. 



When I approached within the possibility of 

 more accurate examination, I saw that the line, 

 which stretched from horizon to horizon, extended 

 in a northeast and southwest direction. On our 

 side, the south, the water showed dark and rough, 

 but much lighter and smoother to the north. When 

 the Arcturus was at last actually astraddle of 

 the rip, I saw it as a narrow line of foam, zigzag- 

 ging across the placid sea, with spouting white-caps 

 shooting up through the froth that marked the 

 meeting place of the great ocean currents. 



