300 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



over my head, — I am eclipsed, and change planets. 



I sink down, down, down, and finally let go the 

 last rmig, drop quietly and deliberately on my 

 feet, and look aromid at a city of giant mushrooms. 

 A huge dome in front of me offered good climb- 

 ing, so I kicked my feet and body free, and drifted 

 to the top with slight tugs of my hands, gravita- 

 tion all but negatived. From the top I looked 

 down upon a marvellous boulevard of the whitest 

 sand, bordered by edifices of coral beyond all ade- 

 quate adjective and exclamation. In the middle 

 distance I saw the palace of the Dalai Lama at 

 Llhasa with its majestic down-dropping lines, be- 

 yond it the corals had wrought a fairy replica of 

 the temple of the Tirthankers at Benares. Then 

 a cloud of pagodas filled the end of the sandy vis- 

 ta, silhouetted against the blue at which I can 

 never cease marvelling whenever I think of this 

 water world, — a pale cerulean, oxidized now and 

 then with the glimmering through of some still 

 more distant monument. Invariably the archi- 

 tecture of the East was brought to mind, not the 

 semi-plagiarized structures of most of our western 

 efforts, but light, uplifted pagoda roofs, curving 

 domes, and stalagmite minarets, together with the 

 scroll-work which is lace-like but never ginger- 

 bready. 



Through many days of watching, sometimes 

 rising to the surface grey with the soaking of 

 water, or chilled and chattering, but always re- 

 luctantly — I studied the fishes, the aborigines of 

 these places, and I found them astonishingly like 



