A SEA OF FIRE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2665, 12 April 1905, Page 67

A SEA OF FIRE.

By a Banker

Scattered throughout the dark, sunless recesses of the great deep are countless varieties of living organisms, some minute, some large and powerful, which, compensated by Nature for the eternal night in which they dwell, have the power of emitting sufficient light to enable them to .discern their prey, to see their mates and comrades, and to illuminate their sombrous hunting grounds. It is true otir knowledge of the dwellers of the remoter depths of the ocean is necessarily limited, and more especially in reference to the larger denizens of those profound chambers of the abysmal deep ; yet notwithstanding the tremendous weight ever pressing down upon them, equal in places to more than two tons to the , square inch, some of the ever-glowing creatures which roam about in the perpetual night of those dark and dismal waters are both graceful and beautiful.

\Yhat a weird spectacle must be presented in these ocean depths if, as is probable, every living creature is endowed with luminosity. Now a shoal of fish darting past like a flight of fisry arrows, amidst those floating balls of fire, the medusae, the glittering filsments of the beautiful sea-lace, or the sparkling petals of actinia. Or now, perhaps, one of those little known monsters of the great deep flashes past like a blazing meteor — for surely all these denizens of eternal darkness are giltecl with illuminating powers — in a moment scattering into the obscurity of night all those many-coloured scintillant water-sprites, which have been darting to and fro all aglow like fabled fishes in the sparkling rivers of Fairyland.

But not in the profounder chambers of the deep alone are to ba found these luminous creatures; foi- oftiiuies millions dispoit themselves upon the surface, the most familiar of all being that animated little globe of fire which m such prodigious swarms illuminate the sea for many miles around, lighting it up as though a brilliant moon were shining in the zenith. And as the vessel ploughs her way through the surge, the foam thrown up from her bows is a flood of liquid fire, every drop glittering as with the soft and vivid brightness of the moon, while the torrent flowing from the paddle wheels is a shining cascade of molten silver, which continues to flash and glisten in the wake of the vessel until long after she ha.-, passed through the great shoal of these fireflies of the sea. Till then every breaking wave is a fiery cataract, every wisp of wind-swept foam a lustrous meteor, aad the wide expanse of the heaving

ocean a throbbing turmoil of liquid wildfire But a time wii! come v.hen we 100 shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for e\ er and ever. But rnly on condition that v,e obey ll<-r belies* of our

; God, and that the Sfviour of the worid havj mg atoned {or us, the Accuser can, in consequence, Jiving nothing again =t us at the judj,- ) mail ol the Great Day. But for those whe 1 iefu=-c- tc come to Him for salvation, there leinaineth, c'laa, but — The Darkness'