298 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



lanes and streets and mountains, but the identical 

 fish themselves. The little old lady in Paris, 

 garbed in black, who used to pass me on her way 

 to market every day had always the same tear in 

 her veil, and now, the small, fussy demoiselle fish- 

 let which invariably scurried past when I had 

 taken my seat, was known to me among all her 

 neighbors by the frayed spot on the side of her 

 fin. 



I succeeded in merging myself with the life of 

 fishes, aided by the lack of fear or even respect 

 with which they greeted my entrance into their 

 world. But when I began to think in words I 

 found that just as I had to have a stream of at- 

 mosphere flowing down to me, bringing with it all 

 the little motes and beams belonging wholly to the 

 upper world, so when my mind began resolving 

 what my senses sent to it, into outflowing words, 

 these were ever burdened with dry-earthly similes 

 and metaphors. 



To an eye above the water my new kingdom's 

 limits, within the confines of these Cocos and Gal- 

 apagos Islands, would appear like a multitude of 

 thinnest of rings scattered about just beneath 

 the surface. For this is an egocentric kingdom as 

 far as I am concerned, and its lower boundaries 

 are those of my pitiful extremes of penetration. 

 As for the upper frontiers, I admit neither rock 

 nor weed ever bathed by the air even at lowest 

 tide. All between I have made mine by right of 

 imagination and a few score of timid entrances 

 and creepings about. Yet always, while among 



