388 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



trawl with mouth 3x7 feet put over to windward over the starboard 

 rail. The wire ran out evenly and so smoothly that we were tempted 

 to increase the speed, and ran out 4000 metres in sixty-six minutes. 

 From 11 A.M. to 2:30 p.m. we barely maintained steerage way, run- 

 ning the port engine at slow speed. 



The intake of wire was at half the speed of the paying out. 3000 

 metres had come in and all seemed to be going well, when a great 

 cry of alarm broke from everyone, as from the blue depths a great 

 mass of tangled wire rose steadily toward the cleeve at the tip of the 

 outswung boom. The drum was stopped just in time to prevent the 

 wreck that would have resulted if that snarl of cable had gone ten 

 feet further. The first officer and four deck hands performed miracles 

 of cutting and splicing, so that the trawl was saved. That gigantic 

 cluster of festooned cable coming over the rail was the nearest thing 

 we've seen to a giant octopus. After all, however, only a hundred 

 metres of cable were damaged. 



The end of the trawl was placed carefully in a tub of water, the 

 bag untied and the net opened. To a Gloucester fisherman accus- 

 tomed to seeing his net bulge with hundreds of food-size fish, this haul 

 would have been a complete and perfect failure, and at first we thought 

 so too. Then in the brown meshes, we began to see glistening silver 

 patches, a streak of black floated oflF the net and became a strange fish, 

 a scarlet blot was unfolded from a hidden corner of the trawl and 

 almost invisible transparent creatures were betrayed by a glint of light 

 along their paper-thin bodies. The first live fish of the expedition was 

 in this haul, a tiny globular chap, energetic but short-lived. He was 

 christened "Zoop," after our German mess-boy's pronunciation of the 

 first course at dinner. The complete list of the haul follows: 



STATION 7, PTl 



1 Wing-finned Globe-fish 

 8 Sternoptyx diaphana 

 7 Cyclothone signata 

 1 pink-banded fish 

 1 small black fish 



1 squid, 15 inches long 



2 Siphonophores 

 2 scarlet shrimps 



1 Medusa — Periphylla 

 6 Coral pink Sagittae 

 1 transparent Sagitta 

 Many Salpae 



Noon position; Lat. 26° 57' N; Long. 61° 14' W. 



Feb. 27th. Tropicbirds are distinctly a drug on the market, there 

 being a supply of two, and absolutely no demand. Fair and warmer, 

 real blue sea, and the smoothest we have had so far. No stops to-day, 

 as we are headed for the Atlantic Ridge, where we shall loiter for 



