The things we do!

O. Company, which runs
from Ceylon to Sydney, touching at King George's Point and Melbourne.
At five o'clock in the evening, before that fleeting twilight
which binds night to day in tropical zones, Conseil and I
were astonished by a curious spectacle.
It was a shoal of argonauts travelling along on the surface of the ocean.
We could count several hundreds. They belonged to the tubercle kind
which are peculiar to the Indian seas.
These graceful molluscs moved backwards by means of their
locomotive tube, through which they propelled the water already
drawn in. Of their eight tentacles, six were elongated,
and stretched out floating on the water, whilst the other two,
rolled up flat, were spread to the wing like a light sail.
I saw their spiral-shaped and fluted shells, which Cuvier
justly compares to an elegant skiff. A boat indeed!
It bears the creature which secretes it without its adhering to it.
For nearly an hour the Nautilus floated in the midst of this shoal
of molluscs. Then I know not what sudden fright they took.


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