DAVEY JONES' GOBLINS 353 



A moonstone, cut in the form of a smooth, ex- 

 quisite oval caught my eye, and I found it to be the 

 test of a siphonophore. Under the lens it trans- 

 cended the beauty of any inorganic jewel, for it 

 throbbed with life and revealed most intricate struc- 

 ture. Its substance was as evanescent as a mass 

 of intersecting shadows caught prisoner for a time 

 in the meshes of a few drops of salt water, — the 

 curving muscle bands, the many infinitely minute 

 rods, cunningly braced, the inward dipping mouth 

 — all were perfect, and the play of color over the 

 surface surpassed the iridescence of soap-bubbles. 



Stirring up a mass of dull grey plankton, again 

 there came the shock of sheer color — like a blow 

 to the body, or a crashing chord to the ear. I know 

 of no other sensation which quite equals the effect 

 on the eye — or the brain behind the eye — as that 

 of a great, glowing, living, rich-scarlet-red shrimp, 

 cold as ice, just raised through a half mile of water. 

 No flower I have ever seen in any setting could 

 vie with it for a moment. It is worth recalling that 

 for countless ages this shrimp and its ancestors had 

 been merely the blackest of beings in a jet-black 

 world, and only for the past few minutes had its 

 blazing color existed. This may partly explain its 

 exciting quality, like the unused rods and cones in 

 our own retina, when we stand on our heads and 

 look out at the world. 



When an unexpected roll of the Arcturus 

 washed the main mass of the cold plankton to one 

 side of the pan, there remained on the bottom a 

 thick deposit of a myriad, fine dots, of all colors and 



