396 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



eight feet long, with enormous staring eyes like great pools in the 

 pale flesh. Paper nautilus floated past, clinging to each others' shells 

 in single file. Creatures that looked like silver dollars came into the 

 circle of light, others which, until lifted in the net, seemed to be 

 nothing but a flat mass of bubbles. Halobates skated on the surface, 

 while crabs large and small paddled from darkness to light and 

 back again. Coryphaena made swift raids on the half-beaks and 

 flyingfish that were attracted by the glare, and once a whole flock 

 of white-winged flyingfish came fluttering into view, with a flight 

 so deceptively like the butterflies they resembled that the swing of 

 the net in mid-air was that of an entomologist. One surprise was a 

 great head of spongy material which proved to be a mass of incal- 

 culable millions of Coryphaena eggs. And another was the taking 

 of a large Sternoptyx, — larger than any we have taken in the deep 

 nets — floating at the surface and much bitten by crabs. 



In the evening we got under way and steamed SW for the Gala- 

 pagos. 



Noon position; Lat. 2° 08' N; Long. 86° 17' W. 



April 3rd. No need to mention weather in this halcyon region. 

 Passed into the Galapagos zone this morning and set half-hour 

 watches in the bow, each watcher to record every sign of life seen. 

 Coryphaenae, tunny, flyingfish, a shark were the fishes recorded; 

 petrels, boobies, tropicbirds, noddy terns and frigatebirds were seen, 

 the last three seeming to tell of land not too far off, and at 5 p. m. 

 a Galdpagos Gull flew over; Halobates were present all day, and the 

 only other insects seen were several moths, but these may have come 

 with us from Panama; the usual surface organisms, such as Porpita, 

 Glaucus and lanthina were frequent, and one fairly large Pyrosoma 

 drifted by; the only mammals were a school of porpoises in the dis- 

 tance. 



In the afternoon a Petersen was put down to 700 fathoms, and the 

 best haul of the trip was secured. Two black sea-devils, with jointed 

 rods springing from the heads, a fish with something that looks like 

 an elephant's proboscis, hundreds of Cyclothones, many Sternoptyx 

 in splendid state of preservation, a large prickly deep-sea shrimp, 

 strange-looking red and black jellyfish (AtoUa) and hosts of small 

 scarlet shrimps and pink Sagittae. 



Late in the evening a half-metre surface net towed for twenty 

 minutes yielded one hundred and forty Myctophidae, all alive and 

 brightly luminescent. Many of the larger ones are Myctophum 

 coccoi. 



Noon position: Lat. 0° 43' N; Long. 88° 84' W. 



April 4th. Sighted Tower Island at dawn to the north. Boobies, 

 frigatebirds and petrels in numbers. Steaming toward Seymour 

 Bay, attended by hundreds of dolphins that converged toward us 

 from all sides. Some of them very large. Sounded at 6 a. m. in 

 5.59 fathoms. A small hawkmoth flew past when we were 35 miles 

 off Seymour. Sighted Indefatigable at 8 a. m. The first sea-lion 



