lO A WONDERER UNDER SEA 



sesame. The helmet may be made from a gasoline tin and 

 some glass, a length of garden hose and an automobile 

 pump. Or the whole outfit may be purchased ready for 

 use. The operation is too easy to need detailed mention. 



But the moment one is submerged, the reality of the 

 absolute apartness of this place is apparent. In the air one 

 weighs one hundred and sixty pounds — ^here one can leap 

 twelve feet, or lift oneself with the crook of a finger. A 

 fall from a coral cliff is only a gentle drifting downward, 

 and one's whole activity is of a piece with the exquisite 

 grace of a slow motion picture. 



In this Kingdom most of the plants are animals, the 

 fish are friends, colors are unearthly in their shift and 

 delicacy; here miracles become marvels, and marvels re- 

 curring wonders. There may be a host of terrible dan- 

 gers, but in hundreds of dives we have never encountered 

 them. 



One thing we cannot escape — forever afterward, 

 throughout all our life, the memory of the magic of water 

 and its life, of the home which was once our own — this 

 will never leave us. 



Let us think for a while of this magic of water. Like 

 many other chemical combinations on the earth it exists 

 as vapor, liquid, and solid — cloud, water, and ice — ^but un- 

 like almost all others it is liquid at what, with anthropo- 

 morphic solemnity and conceit, we are pleased to call 

 normal temperatures. That is to say, we human beings are 



