A MOTHERLY KNIGHT IN ARMOR 



sure that if a mermaid and a seahorse appeared for 

 the first time at the same instant I should be much 

 more astonished at the latter. 



My initial experience with a seahorse in Bermuda 

 was from the point of a souvenir rather than as 

 Hippocampus punctulatus. It was the first point of 

 call of the Arcturus and we anchored at St. Georges 

 in an afternoon's downpour of rain. I stayed only 

 a few minutes on shore, went to a drugstore and 

 bought the first thing I saw — a dried seahorse 

 covered with gold paint. Had I left it, its future 

 would probably have been to collect dust on the 

 whatnot of some babbittian parlor, instead of 

 which it performed a nobler function — that of a 

 leavening climax after many hours of intensive in- 

 vestigation, in a sudden burst of amazement as Will 

 Gregory saw a golden seahorse lying amid the scar- 

 let and ebony treasures from a mile deep haul in the 

 Sargassum Sea. This achieved successfully, it was 

 thrown overboard and as it sank into the depth of 

 mid-ocean I knew that the slow disintegration even 

 of a dry and gilded seahorse would bring nourish- 

 ment and joy of life to a host of diminutive scaven- 

 gers, and then I remembered that my shilling was 

 still on its way from one Bermudian hand or pocket 

 to another, and I was pleased with the destiny of my 

 first seahorse. 



If we keep on thinking mermaid hard enough we 

 will probably come across something not unlike 

 such a lady and much more wonderful. Things work 

 out that way quite often, as in the case of the sea- 



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