WEIRD EXPERIENCE.

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13412, 9 May 1912, Page 2

WEIRD EXPERIENCE.

SEA LIKE A BOILING POT

-An account of a most curious experience in tho'lndian Ocean on February.. 17 has boan forwarded by Captain H. Bradley, commanding tho Wilson liner Ariosto, to tho Imperial Merchant Service Guild and to the-Indian Government Observatory at Bombay. The night was clear and cloudless, and the sea smooth when, ho says, "wo steamed into the most curious and n'cird atmospheric phenomenon it has b--.' mj lot to oco in all my 40 years' experience of a sea life. As we approached it it had the appearance of breakers on a low beach, but when we »-ot into it at first it looked like flashes of light (not bright) coming from all ■Vinrctkns in rH"k- time. After some Fgav ---.-i-uvt-s of this the tfaslvos assumed :\ hn-ioncd simr<j, following quickly one th:- TuiS'/iYom the ( north, and these couunuod some minutes, steadily ; veering cast RVid.,couth and south-west

iitftrfr-.orth-v.*>st;-:t> ,■■■ ;-■ .::• "All tin- time ibis was going on th©-\ smfirco <>\ ''n"> yosi appeared to.be violently :v:ita+aa, ::t times very high seas, as if 'tii'-j '.vould ©ngvilf tho ship ; the ira.asi.iod waves always gobg m the same <J!raction «xs the waves of light. | uTho sea appeared like a boiling pot, giving one a most curious feeling, the ship being perfectly still, and expecting her to lurch and roll every instant. It turned me dizzy watching the moving flashes of light, so that I had to close my eyes from time to time. We were steaming in this for 20 minutes, and then passed out of it. "For 20 minutes everything around assumed its normal condition, a beautiful, fine, clear and cloudless night. At the end of this tirao we again saw the same thing ahead of the ship, and in a few minutes wore fairly amongst it again, but if anything slightly worse, the waves of light acting in precisely a similar manner, this second lob lasting ] about 15 ;ninutes, when we again steami ed out of it.

"When tho flashes passed over the sea appeared just for that ins^a-nt of time to be full of jelly fish, but I do not thing there were any about. I have r.oen the white water many times in this Arabian sea, but this did not appear like that in any way. It gave one tho idea of the cinomatograph without tho brightness, the flashes being so miicJ? in their movements." /* --■ "