182 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



beneath me. This gave me safe anchorage, and in 

 a minute more all my surroundings, my whole 

 world, went trailing off as far as it could, then, 

 with equal unanimity, all faithfully returned. I 

 glanced upward and was as astonished as if when 

 on land I should suddenly see the moon or sun be- 

 gin bobbing back and forth in the sky, for my 

 turtle was behaving like everything else and being 

 swayed back and forth, suspended in the invisible 

 medium exactly as we at the bottom. To look 

 back upon it, no more silly lack of reasoning could 

 be imagined on my part, but when you leave the 

 world for which God made you and wilfully enter 

 other strange ones, it is reasonable to suppose that 

 your senses and brain have to become readjusted as 

 well as your more physical being. For five minutes 

 I derived infinite delight in alternately swaying 

 with the weed, and holding to the rock, and thereby 

 at will giving to my turtle absolute stability or 

 rhythmical swaying through space. He seemed 

 quite unaffected by the theory, but fascinated by 

 the sight of this strange copper-headed, white- 

 skinned, worm-like being, with an enormously long, 

 curving tentacle from the tip of its nose, forever 

 pouring forth a mass of white, bubbly gas, and 

 which idiotically kept standmg up and sitting down. 

 Never for an instant did the great chelonian take 

 his eyes from me. If I could put down what he 

 actually thought of me no halting words of mine 

 would be necessary in this chapter. 



And still the turtle hung in the sky when two 

 penguins arrived. For a time they swam around in 



