“It is a subglobular insect,” said Greaves, nudging me again, “compressed vertically, convex above, concave beneath, wrapped in a transparent coriaceous envelope, containing a white, gelatinous substance. Repeat that to the men, Bol, will you, should the whiteness make them uneasy. Very few sailors,” said he, addressing me, and talking without appearing in the least degree sensible of the wonderful and alarming milk-white light that was now almost upon us, “take the trouble to scientifically examine what passes under their noses. What, for example, is more often under a sailor’s nose than bilge water? An Irish skipper once asked me what bilge water was. I told him that it was sulphuretted hydrogen, hydrosulphate of ammonia, oxide of iron, and compounds of lead and zinc. ‘Jasus,’ said he, ‘and is that how you spell shtink in English?’”
As he spoke the brig, with a long-drawn flap up aloft, smote the sharply-defined white line, and in an instant was bathed in the unearthly light. We had not been able to see each other’s faces before. Now the very expression of countenance was visible. The whole body of the brig was revealed as though by the light of the moon, and the ghastliness of the light lay in its making no shadow. The seamen stood staring and gaping; withered, they seemed, into a posture of utter lifelessness. But no shadows lay at their feet, no shadow stretched from the foot of the mast; I looked down, the planks lay plain, the seams clear, but I made no shadow. Nor did this magic light mirror itself. I glanced at the polished brass piece aft, but no star of reflection burnt in it, no gleam lay up on the cabin skylight. It was light and yet it was not light, and the wonder of it, and, perhaps, the fearfulness of it, to me, who had never beheld such a sight before, lay in that.
And now, by this time, the whole sea was as though covered with snow or milk, as far as we could extend the gaze. The sky reflected the light and the stars were eclipsed, but the reflection on high had not the glare of the ocean surface. I went to the side and peered over; the brig seemed to be thrusting through an ocean of quicksilver. The water broke thickly and sluggishly in small heaps from the bows, and the patches, as they came eddying aft, were like clots of cream.
The sensation induced by the progress of the vessel was as though she were forcing her way through a dense jelly. The slight heave of the sea was flattened; there was not the least visible motion in this surface of whiteness; the brig stood upright on it and the swing of the trucks would not have spanned the diameter of the moon. There was no fire in the water, no corruscation of sea glow, no green gleam of phosphor. To the very recesses of the horizon went sheeting this marvelous breast of milk-white softness that, though it was not luminous, yet flung an illumination as of the radiance of a faint aurora borealis upon the heavens.
“This is a beautiful sight,” exclaimed Greaves.
“It will be a memorable one,” I answered.
“I have never before,” said he, “seen the white water so white, but the like of this phenomenon which I witnessed off the coast of Natal was heightened and beautified by a strange light in the heavens to the northward. It was a delicate, rosy light. I should have imagined it was the moon rising, had not the moon been up.”
“Do I understand,” said I, “that this sublime light is produced by a marine insect?”
“By nothing more nor less—so ’tis said. It is the marine insect that will sometimes give you an ocean of blood, and sometimes an ocean of exquisite violet, and sometimes, as I have heard, though it is something rare to witness, an ocean of ink.”
“An insect!” I exclaimed. “And how many go to this show?”