A NIGHTMARE LIFE. 



135 



phoresoent lights, displayed along their flanks, like the 

 illuminated port-holes of an ocean-going steamer ; 

 creatures with huge owl-like eyes black as night ; monstrous- 

 spiny crabs and fantastic lobsters, blind as Bartemaeus ; 

 fish again, which cannot be said tc swallow their victims, 

 bat rather to draw themselves over them as in the ni,anner 

 of snakes ; fish with stomachs of such enormous distensi- 

 bility that they can swallow other fish twice their own 

 size. 



It sounds like conjuring, but it is true. 



The creatures of these nethermost depths, brood for 

 ever in the appalling silence of an uttermost night ; preying 

 one upon another in constant carnivorous strife ; living 

 under a pressure which is almost inconceivable ; and in a 

 temperature so low that it seems to defy the possibility 

 of organic life. 



Every hour of their life, every day, every year, is passed 

 in the same awful stagnation of hideous changelessness, 

 under circumstances of almost absolute uniformity. 

 For them, there is no day and no night ; there are no 

 seasons ; there is no sun ; there is no moon. There are 

 no changes from warmth to cold, or from cold to warmth. 

 We cannot even conceive that there is anything in the 

 nature of sound. There is absolutely nothing to mark 

 the flight of time. 



Only the unhappy wretch doomed to perpetual solitary 

 confinement in a dark cell, could fully realize che nightmare 

 of this existence, as we humans can picture it. One 

 could well imagine, that under such circumstances 

 the mere excitement of being eaten alive by some species 

 larger and fiercer than oneself would come as a positive 

 relief. 



These are no mere emptj^ words — although, 

 perhaps, it is not strictly correct to speak of absolute 

 darkness, since many deep-sea fish are phosphorescent, 

 and are provided with the most wonderful luminous 

 contrivances, by which they are enabled to project rays 

 of a feeble light in front of them, for the purpose of groping 



