TO DAVY Jones's locker 129 



glare, excited by some form of emotion. Twice it touched 

 the edge and turned back as if in a hollow cylinder of 

 light. I saw it when at last it left, and I could see no hint 

 of its own light, although it possesses at least three hun- 

 dred light organs. The great advantage of the electric 

 light was that even transparent fins — as in the present 

 case — reflected a sheen and were momentarily visible. 



From this point on I tied a handkerchief about my face 

 just below the eyes, thus shunting my breath downward 

 and keeping the glass clear, for I was watching with every 

 available rod and cone of both eyes, at what was going 

 on outside the six-inch circle of the quartz. 



At 1250 feet several more of the silver hatchets passed, 

 going upward, and shrimps became abundant. Between 

 this depth and 1300 feet not a light or an organism was 

 seen: it was 50 feet of terrible emptiness, with the blue 

 mostly of some wholly new color term — a term quite ab- 

 sent from any human language. It was probably sheer 

 imagination but the characteristic most vivid was its trans- 

 parency. As I looked out I never thought of feet or yards 

 of visibility, but of the hundreds of miles of this color 

 stretching over so much of the world. And with this I 

 will try to leave color alone for a space. 



Life again became evident around 1300 feet and mostly 

 luminous. After watching a dozen or more firefly-like 

 flashes I turned on the searchlight and saw nothing what- 

 ever. These sparks, brilliant though they were, were kin- 

 dled into conflagration and quenched in the same instant 



