Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

42 страница из 418

The story of that cruise is utterly unsensational; it is one simply of calm and unremitting scientific work, almost unaccompanied by peril. To some the treasures acquired will seem valueless. Among the earliest gains, obtained near Cape St. Vincent, with a common trawl, was a beautiful specimen of the Euplectella, “glass-rope sponge,” or “Venus’s flower-basket,” alive. This object of beauty and interest, sometimes seen in working naturalists’ and conchologists’ windows in London, had always previously been obtained from the seas of the Philippine Islands and Japan, to which it was thought to be confined, and its discovery so much nearer home was hailed with delight. It has a most graceful form, consisting of a slightly curved conical tube, eight or ten inches in height, contracted beneath to a blunt point. The walls are of light tracery, resembling opaque spun glass, covered with a lace-work of delicate pattern. The lower end is surrounded by an upturned fringe of lustrous fibres, and the wider end is closed by a lid of open network. These beautiful objects of nature make most charming ornaments for a drawing-room, but have to be kept under a glass case, as they are somewhat frail. In their native element they lie buried in the mud. They were afterwards found to be “the most characteristic inhabitants of the great depths all over the world.” Early in the voyage, no lack of living things were brought up—strange-looking fish, with their eyes blown nearly out of their heads by the expansion of the air in their air-bladders, whilst entangled among the meshes were many star-fish and delicate zoophytes, shining with a vivid phosphorescent light. A rare specimen of the clustered sea-polyp, twelve gigantic polyps, each with eight long fringed arms, terminating in a close cluster on a stalk or stem three feet high, was obtained. “Two specimens of this fine species were brought from the coast of Greenland early in the last century; somehow these were lost, and for a century the animal was never seen.” Two were brought home by one of the Swedish Arctic expeditions, and these are the only specimens ever obtained. One of the lions of the expedition was not “a rare sea-fowl,” but a transparent lobster, while a new crustacean, perfectly blind, which feels its way with most beautifully delicate claws, was one of the greatest curiosities obtained. Of these wonders, and of some geological points determined, more anon. But they did not even sight the sea-serpent, much less attempt to catch it. Jules Verne’s twenty miles of inexhaustible pearl-meadows were evidently missed, nor did they even catch a glimpse of his gigantic oyster, with the pearl as big as a cocoa-nut, and worth 10,000,000 francs. They could not, with Captain Nemo, dive to the bottom and land amid submarine forests, where tigers and cobras have their counterparts in enormous sharks and vicious cephalopods. Victor Hugo’s “devil-fish” did not attack a single sailor, nor did, indeed, any formidable cuttle-fish take even a passing peep at the Challenger, much less attempt to stop its progress. Does the reader remember the story recited both by Figuier and Moquin Tandon,29 concerning one of these gigantic sea-monsters, which should have a strong basis of truth in it, as it was laid before the French Académie des Sciences by a lieutenant of their navy and a French consul?