198 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



of the ocean's depths, and put hmi in the midst of 

 a tropical desert at breathless noon, or make him 

 climb the Himalayan hills until his very marrow 

 is frosted with the winds which caress Kinchin- 

 junga, and his lungs cry out for their need of 

 oxygen, — and his natal earth will seem quite as 

 inimical as the great waves of mid-ocean or the 

 black liquid depths. 



For countless voyages I have hung over the 

 bow of passenger steamers in mid-ocean, making 

 of myself a figurehead of sorts, straining my eyes 

 downward to watch the living creatures which 

 whirled into sight and swept past. Dolphins, fly- 

 ingfish, tunny, an occasional shark — these are 

 familiar to all who have ever glanced over the 

 bow. But the rays of the slanting sun striking 

 obliquely into the smooth surface often revealed a 

 myriad, myriad motes — more like aquatic dust than 

 individual organisms, which filled the water from the 

 very surface to as deep as the eye could penetrate. 



Toward sunset these would vanish in the in- 

 creasing dimness, and finally the bow would cut 

 its way through an opaque, oxidized liquid, as 

 unlike water as tar to glass. The moon overhead 

 which showed in the waning day as a crescent of 

 cloud, now cuts through the darkness like a sliver 

 of gold. So the minute sea life becomes, in the 

 dark, redoubly visible, and the ship ploughs a deep 

 furrow through miles of star dust — phosphores- 

 cence which will fill the last imaginative human 

 being as full of wonder and awe as it did the first 

 who ever ventured out to sea. 



