roamer, a pelagic wanderer, found everywhere in tropic and semi-tropic seas; a radiant creature adding to the beauties of the open sea, as do the birds to some grove or forest ashore. Doubtless the young are found and born on the surface of the open sea.

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CHAPTER XXII

SOME OCEAN AERONAUTS

O the casual observer the wide stretch of ocean, boundless and undefined, has no especial interest beyond its vastness and the mystery which surrounds its abysmal depths; yet to him who, from a love of all things beautiful, has made the restless waters an objective for study and observation, who has

laid his hand upon the Ocean's mane,

And played familiar with his hoary locks, comes a deep and abiding sense of pleasure. To such an one, the apparently endless expanse is not merely a waste of waters, but at all times a living thing whose moods, lights, and shadows are invested with a peculiar and enduring charm.

One of the most impressive sights I have ever witnessed was the ocean beaten, torn, and buffetted in the heart of a hurricane. The ship was lying partly on her beam ends, with but a handful of sail to keep her head to the constantly shifting wind. A strange moaning sound filled

the air, the wind strumming on the shrouds, as upon the strings of some gigantic æolian harpa feature which added strangely to the weirdness of the scene. The wind, which came in fitful gusts, blew the storm clouds so low that they formed a strongly-defined belt of black, thirty or fifty feet above the water, into which the frightful waves seemed to leap and disappear. Clinging to the rigging near the mizzenmast, I was fascinated by the sight, realizing the full possibilities of ocean scenery. Here were mountains, hills, abysmal depths, vast caverns of solid green and amber with marvellous fluctuations of color that seemed to race over the surface to be swallowed up in a darkness deeper than night. Here was staged a marine phantasmagoria with all its divertisement, every possibility of scenic effect except life. But as I looked, a wall of water rose, towering over the ship, and from its crest was torn a single living thing, the apotheosis of the storm,—a flying fish, that soared away high in air to become lost in a cloud of foam; showing that here where human life hung in the balance, in a turmoil of the elements appalling to contemplate, one of the most helpless of all the fishes found a home, suggestive of the remarkable adaptation of animal life to almost every condition and environment.

The flying fishes in their variety are essentially

a part of the scenery of the ocean, forming a graceful and picturesque feature. We see them in the fiercest storms, bounding with the abandon of perfect confidence into the air, carried upward by the gale, yet preserving their equipoise, and by the aid of their parachute-like fins covering long distances over the waste of waters. They rise over the waves in graceful undulation, plunge into the deep valleys of the moment, in a marvellous way adapting their movements to the ever-varying fancy of the ocean surface. During a calm, when the ocean is a mirror and the aiding wind is low, they are still present, skimming along like swallows, or grotesque insects, their black eyes staring, their wings gleaming like burnished silver in the sun.

In the northern waters the flying fishes are confined to the forms whose tints are silver and various shades of steely blue; but in tropical and semi-tropical seas are found the flying gurnards, gorgeously-colored creatures, veritable knights of the wave, armed cap-a-pie, bearing a helmet impervious to the most vigorous contact with living foe or any inanimate object it may strike in blind or reckless flight.

These two representatives of the ocean fliers, with their many varieties, the species of the scientist, afford an interesting field for speculation to the casual observer, who merely delights in their beauty and wonders at their seemingly