Page 365 - The Tigris Expedition

From Asia to Africa; from Meluhha to Punt
awa y fast. This Neptunus did sideways, incredibly swiftly, and by a
brilliant coordination of five pairs of legs. The forelimbs with the
big claws were both turned to the left, right arm flexed at the elbow
to reduce friction and left arm fully outstretched behind to serve as a
regular steering-oar. The hindmost pair had the two outer joints
flattened like oar-blades for fast paddling, with a complex system of
hinges that ensured maximum effectiveness, and the other three
pairs of slim limbs just scurried along. The way all the complicated
segments of the hard-shelled robot pivoted and functioned, from its
antennae to its propulsion and steering mechanism, was a master-
piece of engineering. Yet this is a trifle in an ocean where whales
have always dived with sounding instruments operating like
modern radar, and where regular jet propulsion is built into the
body of squids so that they can shoot through the water with
rocket-like speed behind their own smoke screen, or glide over the
waves and climb aboard. In a city man may feel second to none. But
alone in the immensity of the universe, among all the creatures that
preceded man and built up the human species, even a most fervent
atheist will wonder if Darwin found the visible road but not the
invisible mechanism.
For two days we sailed among the reddish Nautilus in a calm sea;
then the wind strengthened, we picked up speed, and sailed with
our marine herd into another area dominated by the most beautiful
sky-blue snail shells. Living snails were in them and floated upside
down, hidden from above by plastic-like, segmented bubbles that
helped them to sail about, but not fast enough to avoid recognition
by the trigger-fish, whose turn it was to wriggle forth as fast as they
could, to swallow the blue pearl-like flotsam, shell and sail.
The philosophers of the most ancient civilisations believed man-
kind to be the descendants of mother sea and father sky. Modern
science has come to a somewhat similar conclusion. What else was
there for the first living species to descend from? At night in the
ocean even the stars seemed to come closer to the water and become
part of man’s world again, as they had once been to the people who
first gave them names and used them as familiar landmarks w en
travelling in open spaces. Again we had this strong feeling that on y
life in the wilderness can give, of time fading away, and past an
present becoming one. Time was not divided into ages, on y into
day and night. . ,
When we stood night watch on the steering bridge, or ay on t e
I cabin roof looking at the topmast circling among the ever more
familiar constellations, we began to feel at home in the system up
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