S6 



After the fish had left Grahamstown we still had little leisure, 

 for there was an enormous amount of work to be done in com- 

 pleting the manuscript of the monograph, virtually a book, with 

 numerous plates and detailed accurate drawings, whose prepara- 

 tion took much time. The whole was finally dispatched late in 

 June 1939, and it was only then that my wife was able to give any 

 time to the purely mundane occupation of providing clothes for 

 the infant that appeared five days later. He had a narrow shave 

 from not only coming naked into the world, but of remaining so 

 longer than usual. 



Thus the course of the first Coelacanth — turbulence, trouble, 

 and strain, the inevitable accompaniments of accomplishment. 

 Any great event of this kind tends to become submerged by the 

 little things, and it was only when I was able to detach myself and 

 see the whole in its true perspective that the wonder of it all stood 

 out like a shining beacon. It was a tremendous privilege to have 

 been the first man to work on a Coelacanth. But I had to 

 turn my back on that and look ahead, for now before me was the 

 problem of finding more specimens, of finding where these in- 

 credible animals lived. The remote past had risen dramatically 

 from the sea, at our very door; but did it really live there? From 

 the first I doubted this, but had to make sure. Photographs and 

 offers of a reward were sent to all fishing craft on South African 

 shores, and daily I hoped to hear more. I spoke to the College 

 authorities about the possibility of organising an expedition, but 

 found no response at that time. In any case, the gathering clouds 

 of war and the climax in September 1939, meant the end of all 

 those dreams. Who cared about Coelacanths when bombs were 

 going to fall ? It was far more important to kill Germans than to 

 find Coelacanths. 



