Vast wheel-like constructions. They're especially adapted to roll
through a gelatinous medium from planet to planet. Sometimes, because of
miscalculations, or because of stresses of various kinds, they enter
this earth's atmosphere. They're likely to explode. They have to
submerge in the sea. They stay in the sea awhile, revolving with
relative leisureliness, until relieved, and then emerge, sometimes close
to vessels. Seamen tell of what they see: their reports are interred in
scientific morgues. I should say that the general route of these
constructions is along latitudes not far from the latitudes of the
Persian Gulf.
_Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society_, 28-29:
That, upon April 4, 1901, about 8:30, in the Persian Gulf, Captain
Hoseason, of the steamship _Kilwa_, according to a paper read before the
Society by Captain Hoseason, was sailing in a sea in which there was no
phosphorescence--"there being no phosphorescence in the water."
I suppose I'll have to repeat that:
"... there being no phosphorescence in the water."
Vast shafts of light--though the captain uses the word
"ripples"--suddenly appeared. Shaft followed shaft, upon the surface of
the sea. But it was only a faint light, and, in about fifteen minutes,
died out: having appeared suddenly, having died out gradually. The
shafts revolved at a velocity of about 60 miles an hour.
Phosphorescent jellyfish correlate with the Old Dominant: in one of the
most heroic compositions of disregards in our experience, it was agreed,
in the discussion of Capt. Hoseason's paper, that the phenomenon was
probably pulsations of long strings of jellyfish.
_Nature_, 21-410:
Reprint of a letter from R.E. Harris, Commander of the A.H.N. Co.'s
steamship _Shahjehan_, to the Calcutta _Englishman_, Jan. 21, 1880:
That upon the 5th of June, 1880, off the coast of Malabar, at 10 P.M.,
water calm, sky cloudless, he had seen something that was so foreign to
anything that he had ever seen before, that he had stopped his ship. He
saw what he describes as waves of brilliant light, with spaces between.
Upon the water were floating patches of a substance that was not
identified. Thinking in terms of the conventional explanation of all
phosphorescence at sea, the captain at first suspected this substance.
However, he gives his opinion that it did no illuminating but was, with
the rest of the sea, illuminated by tremendous shafts of light. Whether
it was a thick and oily discharge from the engine of a submerged
construction or not, I think that I shall have to accept this substance
as a concomitant, because of another note. "As wave succeeded wave, one
of the most grand and brilliant, yet solemn, spectacles that one could
think of, was here witnessed."
_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 32-280:
Extract from a letter from Mr. Douglas Carnegie, Blackheath, England.
Date some time in 1906--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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