DAVEY JONES' GOBLINS 341 



when there came the reahzation of cosmic space, 

 or at my first ghmpse of moon momitains through 

 a telescope or my first trip in an airplane, — then 

 I shuddered to my soul, and my heart skipped a 

 beat. I remember pulling in a kite with all my 

 might, trembling with terror, for I had sensed the 

 ghastly isolation of that bit of paper aloft in sheer 

 space, and the tug of the string appalled me with 

 the thought of being myself drawn up and up, 

 away from the solid earth. This, my boyhood's 

 very real terror, returned to me one day on the 

 Arcturus when we had lowered one of our first 

 deep trawls, and I happened to touch the wire 

 cable extending down into the water of mid-ocean. 

 It hummed and vibrated under mv hand, and for 

 a moment stark terror possessed me again as I 

 realized where the net was — a full mile beneath 

 the ship and sunlight, in a region which for power 

 over the human imagination and for utter inacces- 

 sibility compares only with interstellar space. 



Only once again did I experience this — when, in 

 diving helmet, thirty feet beneath the surface, I 

 was struggling against a bad swell on the steep 

 slope of Tagus Cove. I stumbled and began slowly 

 to slide and drift out and down. I grasped at a bit 

 of seaweed and it broke off, the heaving waters 

 turned me partly around. My foot struck against 

 a coral boulder and a sea-fan gave me solid anchor- 

 age. For a minute or more I stared through the 

 glass window — down, down at the terrible translu- 

 cent blue-blackness of that abyss. There would 

 have been no quick, smashing drop as over a dry 



