354 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



sizes. This was, if possible, a more beautiful and 

 astonishing world of life even than the larger crea- 

 tures drifting overhead. Here were hundreds of 

 shells of the one-celled globigerina (Fig. 11), all 

 with their minute occupants, amoebic blobs of pro- 

 toplasm. Other shells were rounded, or elongate 

 or heliced, and with them were mingled a fewer 

 number of real snails, some bivalves and some tur- 

 reted. Here and there, from a nautilus-like shell, 

 an animal something began to protrude. Out of a 

 spiralled mass of unrecognizable tissue there slowly- 

 emerged two eyes, a long proboscis, and, in the 

 wake of several other organs, a pair of wings. As 

 I watched, the wings began to flap, slowly at first, 

 then with more force and regularity, and the snail, 

 shell and all, rose slowly from the globigerina and 

 went flitting off through the water like a rather un- 

 skillful bat. Here we have the secret of the mol- 

 luscan life half-way between surface and ocean 

 floor, and again the deeps show what they can do 

 in the way of miracles — flying snails! 



Now came two creatures, signalizing the antithe- 

 ses of life in these regions. My flying snail and a 

 thousand tiny copepods and sagitt£e were suddenly 

 shouldered aside under my eyes by a moving rain- 

 bow — a jellyfish without a shadow, and it in turn 

 was pushed out of sight by a very small but very 

 terrible octopus, black as night, with ivory white 

 jaws and blood-red eyes. This came along, half 

 swimming, half sidling, its eight cupped arms all 

 joined together by an ebony web. In those icy, 

 black depths, to be a small fish and to come within 



