dreams. It was my last evening on the Bank. The day had been
wonderfully fine for winter and a sea that is notoriously evil. At
twilight the wind dropped, the heave of the waters decreased. The
scattered fleet, gliding through the hush, carried red, green, and white
planets. The ships which lay in the western glow were black and simple
shapes. Those to the east of us were remarkable with a chromatic
prominence, and you thought, while watching them, that till that moment
you had not really seen them. Presently the moon cleared the edge of the
sea, a segment of frozen light, and moored to our stern with a quivering,
ghostly line.

Coloured rockets sailed upwards from the admiral when he changed his mind
and his course, and then the city of mobile streets altered its plan, and
rewove its constellation. At midnight white flares burned forward on all
the boats. The trawls were to be hauled. Our steam-winch began to bang
its cogs in the heavy work of lifting the net. All hands assembled to
see what would be our luck. The light sent a silver lane through the
night, and men broke through the black walls of that brilliant separation
of the darkness, and vanished on the other side. Leaning overside, I
could see the pocket of our trawl drawing near, still some fathoms deep,
a phosphorescent and flashing cloud. It came inboard, and was suspended
over the deck, a bulging mass, its bottom was unfastened, and out gushed
our catch, slithering over the deck, convulsive in the scuppers. The
mass of blubber and plasm pulsed with an elfish glow.


9

We were homeward bound. The flat sea was dazzling with reflected
sunshine, and a shade had to be erected over the binnacle for the man at