72 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



tently from what my artist once offered as a defini- 

 tion of a monkey, a desire to be somewhere else than 

 I am. , 



Considering carefully this whirling ball of mud 

 upon which I found myself, I read in books and 

 saw pictures of jungles and deserts, and my desire 

 to see them was just a little stronger than the many 

 obstacles between; I had breathed the air and 

 watched birds fly for an unconscionable number of 

 years before I began my first wobbly taxi-ing 

 across a flying field. Since then I have left the earth 

 under pleasant and unpleasant conditions over three 

 hundred times, and, except twice, returned safely. 



Without shame I confess that I have lain awake 

 nights and spent innumerable hours of my life in 

 gazing at the moon and planets — nay, even at the 

 Small Magellanic Cloud with desire and longing, 

 for if one wishes to visit inter-stellar space, one 

 might as well hold the thought of a passage on 

 Tomlinson's route as on a mensurable moon trip. 

 Up to the present, twenty-two thousand feet is as 

 far as I have been able to rise above solid ground. 



Another realm which has always seemed as re- 

 mote as the moon is the depth of the ocean. My 

 reading and wishing never took any concrete, defi- 

 nite direction until the trip I made to the Galap- 

 agos on the Noma. Then I first realized the glories 

 and desirability of the submarine world. This at 

 once encouraged and then disheartened me — the 

 encouragement coming from the ease of diving from 

 a boat or a pier and watching for a brief moment 

 the fish and sea-things, sitnultaneously with the 



