322 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



and steamed away, and weeks have passed since the 

 last dredge came up, I am confused as to the man- 

 ner of telling about it. What I did day and night, 

 of dredging and trawling, was done so blindly, so 

 gropingly, what came up was such a pitiful frac- 

 tion of the great mass of hfe which must be below, 

 that I feel like a deaf, dumb and blind person 

 attempting to interpret a wholly new and strange 

 world. 



With more usual islands, one naturally begins 

 with the life of the ground, then that of the trees, 

 and finally with net and gun and glasses one 

 collects and studies the beings of the free air. Here 

 I shall reverse the process and begin with the top 

 of the water column. 



On Sunday, May twenty-fourth, in the late 

 afternoon we pulled up anchor at Cocos Island, 

 and steamed westward out of Chatham Bay, slowly 

 encircling the island. After skirting the south- 

 ern headlands and passing the zone of uncharted 

 shore, I gave orders to turn south, and in a swirl 

 of wind and rain Cocos changed from dull green 

 to grey, and finally was lost in the black mist of 

 night. Under slow speed we crept southward, and 

 at dawn, with the mountainous little island just 

 visible on the northern horizon. Bill Merriam let 

 go the sounding weight. Minute after minute the 

 piano wire hummed its song of swift descent into 

 the blue waters, and came to rest at last when the 

 seventy-five pounds of oval iron weight struck 

 bottom in seven hundred and seventy-one fathoms 

 — both weight and depth sonorously reiterating 



