CHAPTER XI 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF XeSUVUS 



I HAD made probably forty submersions in my 

 diving helmet, and on my last ascent sat shiver- 

 ingly on the dripping thwart and with water- 

 wrinkled fingers scrawled damp notes on what I 

 had seen. About this time I became obsessed 

 with an unendurable impatience when I thought 

 how relatively little of cohesive value I had ob- 

 tained during my two score descents; what slight 

 correlation I had observed among all the submarine 

 activities. I tried to parallel that day's notes with 

 corresponding items which a Martian, dropped into 

 Fifth Avenue or Regent Street, might glean in a 

 few minutes' time: 



Descended eighteen feet Landed on the edge of a 



and sat on a volcanic block as machine as large as a small 



large as an automobile, cov- ether-cycle, with glaring pos- 



ered with great round patches ters of strange, beautiful 



of orange and purple sponge; women and the place of the 



little fish swam curiously murder, plastered on its side; 



around me and dived into newsboys crowded around and 



grottos just out of reach. I swarms of people dashed into 



could not move about much holes in the ground, and 



for there were patches of poured out of places called 



long-spined sea-urchins every- Exits. There were spikes on 



where. A school of small the top of a park wall and 



ladyfish and wrasse came to Keep Off signs so I could 



a bit of crab-meat which I not walk about freely. Some 



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