Mountain Home Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1915-1946, 1924-05-16

le0d since the days or the Challenger.
"Yes, Yankees have done gooi
work." said Masterman. "But I've go
them all beaten now. Nobody vii
bother his head about the earlier dis
coveries after the next few weeks
You've heard about the known forms
of deep-sea life, haven't your
Without waiting for a reply, he be
gan to speak about the strange or
ganisms that had been dredged from
the ocean bottom, so that Donald saw
the whole picture in Masterman's
brain. He saw the eyeless fishes that
had abandoned the effort to see, and
fishes with eyes as large as dinner
plates, with which they caught the
CLEANS of phosphorescence that be-
tokened the pursuit of wandering sea
scavengers. There were fishes that
carried their own lures in the form of
luminous tentacles.
In the abysmal depths, in a realm
of perpetual night, these organisms
! perpetuated an inferno of slaughter,
preying upon each other, rowing on
their Unsuitable quest for food.
Masterman leaned forward and
spoke emphatically.
when they are brought up-up
through three miles of water-they
explode mostly, Donald" he said. "If
they didn't-well. I've seen things that
would make a stout man faint, my
lad"
Paget shuddered as his mind con-
ceived the picture that the old cap
tain painted. He saw the giant mon
sters of the abyss lurking among the
yellow, carnivorous lilies that bend
and sway in league-long gardens,
catching the plankton, the floating or
drifting organic life of the sea, that
comes down like finest meal from
above, but always ready for larger
prey.
'It's murder enthroned, Donald"
said Masterman. "There isn't love-
not even maternal love. Nor pity,
either. Suppose our world were like
thatp
He was watching Donald keenly as
he spoke.
eve take life as we find it," Lieu
tenant Paget answered. ''But, thank
heaven, life has it's compensations,
which make it worth the living"
He was thinking of Ida Kennedy as
he spoke.
"But once our life was like that"
persisted Masterman. "And we've
risen above it. Don't tell me there
isn't a God when we've done that,
just as the beautiful birds evolved out
of vicious reptiles. You know, of
course, our ancestors were sea crea-
lures. That's why the specific grav-
ity of the human body is about the
same as that of salt water. We were
made to live in the sea. We come
from fishes. You believe that?"
Eyes, science tells us So"
"Good. Now you've studied at
school what I've only read in books,
but you know that there was time
when the seas were warm, steaming
baths, and the steam formed clouds,
so that the sun had never been seen.
Before the sun appeared, the world
was just diffused light and darkness.
There's an answer to your Bible crit
les who say Genesis is all wrong, be-
cause it says light was made before
the sun. Light did exist, before the
sun was dreamed of, so far as man is
you're right, sir" answered Don
I'D, who like most sailors, was re-
igious man.
"And then" continued Masterman,
what does the record tell us? The
moving creatures that have life were
made, and the great sea monsters, Lee
latham and his kind and the fowls
# the air. And afterward the earth
and creeping things. And
nan not till the last. Now don't tell
ne, lieutenant, that the man who
wrote the story of the creation wasn't
n up-to-date scientist.
"Well, sir, at last the day came when
be waters had cooled, the clouds
pened, and the sun streamed through.
BY that time the ocean wasn't so
leasant a place to live in as formerly, :
specially as the climatic zones were !
ppearing. No doubt there was a rush I
D the equator on the part of the sur
ace monsters. But the ocean beds :
-ere still warm from the hot rocks,
nd the heat down there was good for
everal thousand, or hundred thou +
and years yet. q
$50 some of the sea creatures re- .
lained in the depths, and others pre- +
erred to bask on the rocks in the sun :,
ght. Then their gllls began to be o
splaced by lungs, or else they had 4
Ills as well as lungs, or an interme-
late apparatus" .
"Common today, captain. Certain .
yards develop either lungs or gills, !,
,cording to the medium in which e
ley live" =
"Well, sir, as 1 understand it, the !,
-st organisms that came out on land -
ere arrnor plated, like the crabs and q
,iny fossil fishes. Their bones were -
/ the outside, to protect them against =,
ling eaten. But after a while the !,
ones turned themselves in
de out. Those that didn't, remained