Another night I caught a Portuguese man-o’-war in a scoop net and was stung by him on both hands. This is a jelly fish kind of thing with long trailers or tentacles. And these tentacles are poisonous and sting their prey so they can eat the little fish or plankton. I also caught a little transparent fish, pale colors with dabs of bright red on the lower fin. Miss Cooper painted him. And I got a bright red squid and many small crabs one of which was scarlet. Altogether I think I had the most fun at Hood Island, because the beach was so long and the shore line was so easy to explore. Mother went to the tops of three of the highest peaks in the island and saw way over the first ridge a long low lagoon of fresh water, probably rain water with great reddish muddy pools. There are many goats here, quite wild and unused to man. Some are bright faun color, others have black stripes or spots and one old buck which the crew shot and brought in had entire white hind quarters, brownish head, black beard and large horns. They eat the cactus leaves and the small trees and the wisps of grass. There is a good deal of soil here, reddish and evidently very heavy rains at this season. The lagoons are fresh rain water and in places climbing up the mountains it seems like half dried stream beds or water courses—rocks and muddy places between, and then great terraces of tuffa rock, a very sharp lava rock which is hard to climb over. A DAY ON SHIPBOARD Soon after dawn each day one of the crew washes the decks. And it seems only a short time later that Willie, the German mess boy calls “Hallf pass seex.” I jump out of my cot on the upper deck, put on shorts, shirt and sneakers and beat it for breakfast at seven o’clock. Just after breakfast or just before, the temperatures are taken and samples of water brought up from the different depths of the ocean. When that is finished, the depth of the ocean is measured. This is called “sounding.” A heavy lead weighing seventy-five pounds is let over on a piano wire till bottom is reached. Of course the ship’s engines have to be stopped while this is going on. The sounding machine has a contraption for bringing up samples of the sea bottom, so that one knows if there is sand or mud or rock below. Our soundings have varied from 746 fathoms to 2070 fathoms. A fathom is six feet. It is fun to feel the icy cold water brought up, sometimes just above freezing although we at the surface are broiling with heat if we get out of the breeze.