A DESCENT INTO PERPETUAL NIGHT 205 



drab, the hue of water-soaked flesh, an unhealthy buff. It 

 was a color worthy of these black depths, like the sickly 

 sprouts of plants in a cellar. Another strange thing was its 

 almost tailless condition, the caudal fin being reduced to 

 a tiny knob or button, while the vertical fins, taking its 

 place, rose high above and stretched far beneath the body, 

 these fins also being colorless. I missed its pelvic fins and 

 its teeth, if it had any, while such things as nostrils and 

 ray counts were, of course, out of the question. 



There is a small family of deep-sea fish known as Ceto- 

 vumidce, and somewhere in or close to this the strange 

 apparition belongs. Only three species are known, and only 

 twenty-four individuals have so far been captured, six- 

 teen of which have been in our own deep nets drawn 

 through these very waters. I have called the fish we saw 

 the Pallid Sailfin, and am naming it BatJoyembryx istio- 

 phasma, which is a Grecian way of saying that it comes 

 from deep in the abyss and swims with ghostly sails. 



Although I had already seen many deep-sea forms on 

 this dive, yet here was one larger than any we had ever 

 taken in nets. The Sailfin was alive, quiet, watching our 

 strange machine, apparently oblivious that the hinder half 

 of its body was bathed in a strange luminosity. Preemi- 

 nently, however, it typified the justification of the money, 

 time, trouble, and worry devoted to bringing the bathy- 

 sphere to its present efficiency. Amid nameless sparks, un- 

 explained luminous explosions, abortive glimpses of strange 

 organisms, there came, now and then, adequate oppor- 



