silk. Still, the impression they wrought by their 

 appearance was made not so much upon the retina 

 as upon the brain — it was an impression not of see- 

 ing: rather it was one of feeling. There was pro- 

 duced within me that unutterable consciousness of 

 hovering in ecstatic propinquity with an extra- 

 mundane world, a world not cold or liquid, but 

 warm and airy and where gravitation did not exist. 

 And as some small sable-finned sea-horse remained 

 poised for the moment, fanning the water before 

 it was startled from its retreat, the illusion was 

 still more deeply pronounced. 



At last I was compelled to desist from collecting 

 and I returned to the Hippocampus; the combina- 

 tion of wind and waves and cold would have made 

 further efforts insufferable. It was not, however, 

 without a fair harvest that we left. When we 

 turned the prow homeward, the tub more than half 

 full of seaweed was in the cabin so that our 

 reaping would not be killed by the forming ice. 



I have already remarked that when we left the 

 harbor it was blowing a half-gale. But that was 

 merely a zephyr compared with what we now had 

 to combat. Indeed, much could be said about that 

 return trip, about the fury of the blast — and this 



[46] 



