AN ISLAND OF WATER 321 



rapidity of growth during the period of inaction, 

 the engines becoming rusty, the engineers and 

 oilers faUing asleep one by one — indeed before I 

 knew it I had visualized another Flying Dutch- 

 man, only under a static instead of a dynamic 

 spell; I seemed to be laying the foundation of a 

 Pacific sea of dead ships. 



I prepared for the experiment by the study of 

 a wholly different type of fish fauna — the shore 

 fishes of Cocos Island, — that speck of land so be- 

 loved by the pirates of old, about five hundred 

 miles off the coast of Panama. If preliminary 

 success was augury of good luck, I should have 

 been contented, for the finny inhabitants of 

 Chatham Bay yielded up their secrets in wonder- 

 ful fashion. The rainy season had been a jest at 

 the Galapagos, but no season ever merited it more 

 than at Cocos. As I spent most of my time in my 

 diving helmet beneath the surface I hardly noticed 

 the constant downpour, but it was a fact that the 

 air was saturated most of the time. Dwight 

 Franklin one day laid a water-color sketch marked 

 "Cocos" on my laboratory desk, a composition con- 

 sisting of a wide expanse of sea, with a small 

 smudge of a rain storm in the center; a joke but 

 not an exaggeration. 



When I had once halted my ship in mid-ocean 

 I had no hesitation in knowing what to do. I 

 wanted to learn all I could of what flew in the air, 

 floated on the surface, dived in the depths or 

 burrowed into the substance of this tiny pin-point 

 in the great Pacific. But now that I have finished 



