CHAPTER IX 



COCOS THE ISLE OF PIRATES 



BY WILLIAM BEEBE AND RUTH ROSE 



I LOVE to think of the meeting places of the great 

 elements, as where I sit in my bow pulpit in mid- 

 Pacific. The sea is mirror calm with only the 

 silent slipping past of lazy swells, more like evan- 

 escent breaths on glass than actual movement. So 

 clear and blue and still is the surface that I can- 

 not tell where the liquid begins and the air ends. 

 Now and then the bow dips and my feet gently 

 sink below the surface. The air is quiet and neither 

 hot nor cold, and the world is perfect, with all man- 

 kind and his works out of sight behind me. I sit 

 and solemnly make notes on the creatures I see, I 

 ponder and wonder, and finally I am utterly dis- 

 couraged at the thought of hoping to know the 

 things of this planet any more clearly. Then comes 

 a comforting thought, that after all I cannot expect 

 to do much with a brain which has only one-ninth 

 of tissue and substance to hold together the eight- 

 ninths of water. 



Five distinct and separate smudges of rain 

 beaded the horizon, and as my eye played idly over 



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