306 



THE LAST CRUISE OF THE CARNEGIE 



an outboard platform. We lost forty-two hundred meters of 

 wire, nine reversing-bottles, and eighteen of our precious deep-sea 

 reversing-thermometers. We could ill afford such depletions in 

 equipment, so from this time on the thermal and chemical series 

 was not lowered until the bottom-sampling was completed. 

 This change almost doubled the time required for a station. 



By this time we thought old Neptune had exhausted his supply 

 of practical jokes. But on October 19 we had to repeat the whole 



Young Bo'son-birds of the South Pacific 



deep-series of chemical and temperature-determinations, be- 

 cause a tiny piece of rope-yarn, caught by the messenger in de- 

 scending, had prevented it from reversing the bottles. After this 

 the first thought that came into our minds as we came on deck 

 for the day's work, was: "What next.-^" 



Referring to our losses in equipment in a radio message to our 

 headquarters on November 1st, Captain Ault remarked: "From 

 our dynamic computations, the Counter-equatorial Current is a 

 mighty river in the Pacific Ocean flowing thirty miles per day 



