WITH HELMET AND HOSE 97 



eerie character of this place had penetrated even my 

 prison of copper and glass, and when I realized 

 where my precious ladder would drift to when I 

 relinquished my hold, looked down at my unpro- 

 tected limbs and realized that I had not even a 

 trident with me, I decided to go through life with 

 the mystery of the stairway unsolved. The great, 

 grey being, wafting along its hundreds of pounds 

 of body by slow, gentle undulations, kept on and on 

 until again hidden by the blue light. When I as- 

 cended to a world of greater reality, I took with me 

 the memory of the beings to which legend and fact 

 have brought the greatest notoriety of anything in 

 the sea, and the setting in which I found them will 

 never pass from mind — the Edge of the Edge of 

 the World. 



