Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 136.djvu/445

 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

OCTOBER, 1925

THE SHARKS OF NARBOROUGH

BY WILLIAM BEEBE

I ANCHORED the glass-bottomed diving- boat as close to the cliffs of northern Narborough as I dared, in a cove where the water was so deep that the swells remained unbroken wuntil shattered against the lava itself. The rocks at this point showed very clearly their division into successive lava-flows, some like frozen, black molasses-candy six feet thick, alternating with thin- ner strata in the shape of huge bricks. The topmost layer was the same old ploughed field of cinder crags and snags with which we were so familiar on Albemarle. This is probably the erup- tion of one hundred years ago of which Morell wrote so vividly.

This, my seventieth descent, took me into a submarine world as strange as and as unlike that of Tagus Cove — which we could still see in the distance from the ship — as that differed from Tower. If they were jungles and deserts, this was a wheat-field. Swal- . lowing as I went, I climbed down and down, and stood at last on a gigantic rounded boulder, thirty feet below the surface.

This roundness itself spelled a dis- tinct difference between this and other shores of the Galapagos. The surf had pounded and rolled the rocks on this VOL. 136 — NO. 4

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unprotected coast until they had be- come huge pebbles. This explained the absence of tide-pools along the shore — the water simply filtering away as soon as the tide-level went down.

The dominant note of the under- water scene in this marvelous island- eddy was the seaweed. Great fields of it extended to the limit of vision, with bare or sponge-covered boulders be- tween. Sargassum, with small berries, grew on long, slender fronds, two or three feet in length, which gave com- pletely to every surge, more so than any land growth to the wind. While I have dived where steady currents hold strong day and night, yet by the very force of circumstances my puny efforts are usually confined to the surge- affected shore. Like a tide which changes every twelve seconds instead of every twelve hours, the whole under- world swayed outward and then, with infinite grace, inward again. All the innumerable strands of greenish-olive bent and flattened away from me, and then, with the slow movement attained only rarely by such growths as weeping willows, rolled toward and wrapped around me, reaching out to- ward the steep ascent marking the beginning of that upper world which