The weed along the coast is honest growth, with promise of permanence. The great floating Sargasso Sea is permanent only in appearance, and when finally the big masses drift, with all their lesser, attendant freight into the gulf stream, then life becomes a sham. There can be no more fruiting or sustained development of gas-filled berries. No eggs of fish or crabs will hatch, no new generation of sea-horses or mollusks appear among the stems. Bravely the fronds float along, day by day the hundred little lives breathe and feed and cling to their drifting home. But soon the gas berries decay and the fronds sink lower and lower. As the current flows northward, and the water becomes colder the crabs move less rapidly, the fish nibble less eagerly at the bits of passing food. Soon a sea-horse lets go and falls slowly downward, to be snapped up at once or to sink steadily into the eternal dusk and black night of deeper fathoms. Soon the plant follows and like all its chilled pensioners, dies. The supply from the Sargasso Sea seems unfailing, but one's sympathies are touched by these little assemblages, so teeming with the hope of life, all doomed by the current which is at once their support, their breath and their kismet.
But all these creatures, interesting as they are, form but a tithe of the life existing around and beneath the ship. Night after night I lean over the bow and watch the phosphorescence flare and flash beneath the surface, the disturbance of the steamer's approach springing a myriad of these floating mines, whose explosions, gentler than those of human make, merely vibrate into a splendor of visibility. How to capture these tiny beings which the eye can scarcely resolve is a matter far more difficult than the netting of the seaweed. I try to plan, then give it up. I walk restlessly over the vessel, seeking some method. But, as is often the case, nature had fairly to force the solution upon me. Thoreau says somewhere, "A trout in the milk is pretty good circumstantial evidence," and in similar guise I saw the light. Early one morning I was paddling in my salt-water bath, thinking of the coming week when I should be able to dive into island harbors from the deck, when I sat up suddenly at the sight of a tiny fish disporting himself with me in the tub. At least I needed no further hint, and as I scooped up the little being my plan was made. By exhaustive inquiry among the feminine portion of the passengers I obtained possession of a small square of a very fine-meshed fabric something like bolting cloth. In the evening, with the assurance of a small monetary liaison with the bath steward, I tied this bit of cloth over the salt-water nozzle and carefully set the faucet so that a dribble of water trickled forth. In the morning the cloth strainer contained a small blob of grayish jelly. This I dropped into a tumbler and saw the water cloud with an opalescent mist of a myriad motes and I knew that my plan was successful. No matter how tempestuous the sea, or at what speed the ship throbbed through the water, I would always be able to gather any amount of the wonderful floating life of the ocean--the phosphorescent plankton--for my microscope. Again, aside from my own edification, I was able to give some thrills to my fellow passengers, and I have had twenty or more lined up for a squint at the weird things of the open sea. In spite of my reassurances, there was reported to be less enthusiasm for the daily bath, and much suspicious inspection of the clear ocean tub water as a result of glimpses of the concentrated cosmos in my tumblers.