94 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



specimens. Don Quixote's horse was nothing com- 

 pared to the worker's ultimate idea of the capacity 

 of that pail (Fig. 20). 



From first to last I could never guess, from ex- 

 amining the bottom through a water-glass, what a 

 submersion would yield, or even look like, except in 

 the most general, superficial way. It was like 

 judging a shore line from a ship with all the in- 

 dentations flattened, all the coves and little bays 

 concealed in the optical straightening, and the 

 wicked, crashing breakers smoothed from behind 

 into harmless appearing ripples. In many lights, 

 the bottom, even only twenty feet down, appears 

 jnerely undulating or paved with huge stones. 



One of the last dives I made in Darwm Bay 

 showed such an aspect from above. I went down 

 rather deeply, but very slowly, for I always came 

 under the spell of the ever wonderful blueness of 

 distance. It seemed impossible, even after all the 

 times I had studied it, that invisibility or opacity 

 of whatever distance could result from such a 

 luminous medium. When at last I rested on the 

 bottom I watched three white-striped angelfish 

 chasing one another in sheer play. They drew my 

 attention upward to where they were breaking the 

 surface film, not far from the boat whose keel was 

 bobbing absurdly up and down. The angelfish 

 then curved downward, the long filaments stream- 

 ing from the fins above and below, and giving the 

 appearance of even greater speed. They rose and 

 fell, circled about, turned on their backs and fell 

 into nose dives as easily as I sat still. Finally, the 



