FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 49 
bells, visible by the fairy iridescence of their palpitating 
outlines, microscopic cuttle-fish and minute jellies, each 
with its own costume and colouring, varied and har- 
monious, schemes from which a lady could choose a 
dress or an artist the colours for his picture. All were 
struggling, powerfully and blindly, to find their way 
through the dim glass that divided them from the sunlight 
that came gouring into the cabin through the open hatch, 
struggling as if the fate of worlds depended on their indi- 
vidual efforts. And this little world of ours does depend 
on their existence ; for, as each dies, his tiny shell and 
spiny armour sink slowly down through the ocean depths 
— far deeper than the depths to which the bones of the 
great whales go — there they rest and form the deposits 
that will form the beds of the peoples of the time to 
come. 
Friday we keep according to the rules of the Mother 
Church, and eat fish — the dried stock-fish one sees in 
grocers' shops, but rarely sees on the table ; and most 
excellent food it is when served with sea hunger for sauce. 
We had hopes of porpoise steak this morning — a suc- 
culent dish— but you have to catch your porpoise first, 
and we find they always disappear when the harpoon is 
brought out. The way to spear them is as follows : — The 
most venturesome of the crew — one who can swim and 
doesn't mind a ducking, preferred — takes a hand harpoon 
and gets out on the martingale. (The martiqgale is a 
short spar projecting downwards from the end of the 
bowsprit, and the bowsprit is what sticks out in front of a 
D 
