HOMEWARD 239 



is a plant or an animal. The light given off by countless millions 

 is a cold light producing no heat, a feat still beyond the scope 

 of human endeavour. 



One morning in the Indian Ocean John Swallow found a small 

 squid about four inches long lying upon the upper deck. It 

 appeared that it must have been attracted by a light on deck. 

 It had been a flat calm night so that the surface of the sea would 

 have been about lo feet below the upper deck. To reach the 

 deck, therefore, John worked out that this small squid must have 

 been swimming at about 27 miles an hour before it left the water. 



In the Atlantic a hawk sat quietly in the rigging, over 1000 

 miles from land. It watched the storm petrels fluttering in the 

 ship's wake and of a sudden left the mast as it would a tree in 

 the English woodlands, and swooping upon its prey took and 

 devoured a petrel. 



Few ships were ever seen upon the voyages Challenger made in 

 the course of her search for knowledge of the sea-floor ; she was 

 guided by the shape of the sea-bed rather than the trade routes. 



The moon rising above the horizon like a ship on fire; the 

 stars so bright on a calm tropic night that silver threads ran 

 beneath them over the dark sea ; the green flash from the setting 

 sun ; the windrows and the calm unaccountable swathes upon the 

 surface of the sea when a gentle breeze begins after calm ; the great 

 fleets of Velellas, pale white and blue, their sails set, and all 

 sailing purposefully before the Trades ; the dolphins racing before 

 the ship's stem one above the other, turning upon their backs 

 to show their white bellies in pure ecstasy of enjoyment; the 

 steady, relentless progress of a giant swell generated by a distant 

 storm, passing across the surface of the sea; golden rafts of algae 

 being the species Trichodesmium, recognisable under the micro- 

 scope as a neat little bundle of sticks : these are the things one 

 has time to regard and time to ponder on when passing unhustled 

 across the face of the ocean. 



Challenger' s arrival at Portsmouth was not quite the end of the 

 story. She paid off and took on a new crew for a last short com- 

 mission to carry out a series of seismic and sounding cruises in 

 the North Atlantic in an attempt to learn more of the topography 

 and construction of that great range of submarine mountains 

 known as the Mid- Atlantic Ridge. She sailed on her usual 



