THE SILENT WARFARE OF THE SUBMARINE WORLD.
ALL imaginative minds are inevitably impressed by the solemn grandeur of the sea. Some shudder at its awful loneliness, its apparent illimitability, its air of brooding, age- less mystery in calm. Others are most affected by its unchain- able energy, the terror of its gigantic billows, its immeasurable destructiveness in storms. Yet others, a less numerous class, ponder over its profundities of rayless gloom and uniform cold, where unthinkable pressures bear upon all bodies, so that cylinders of massive steel are flattened into discs, and water percolates through masses of metal as though they were of muslin. But there is yet another aspect of the oceanic wonders that engage the meditations of comparatively few, and this is perhaps the most marvellous of them alL Placid and reposeful, tempest-tossed or current-whirled, the unchangeable yet unresting surface of the ocean reveals to the voyager no inkling of what is going on below its mobile mask, and even when furrowed deepest by the mighty but in- visible ploughshare of the storm, how slight is the effect felt 20 ft. deep. Yet in those soundless abysses of shade beneath the waves a. war is being incessantly waged which knows no truce, ruthless, unending, and universal. On earth the struggle for existence is a terrible one, exciting all our sympathies when we witness its pitilessness, being our- selves by some happy accident outside the arena. Nature, "red in tooth and claw," weeding out the unfit by the operation of her inexorable laws, raises many a doubting question in gentle souls as to why all this suffering should be necessary. They see but a portion of the re- versed pattern woven by the eternal looms. But the fauna of the land are by an enormous majority herbivorous, mild in their habits, and terrified at the sight of blood. Even the carnivora, fierce and ravenous as are their instincts, do not devour one another except in a few insignificant and abnormal cases, such as wolves driven mad by starvation. Much less do they eat their own offspring, although there are many instances of this hideous appetite among the herbivores, which are familiar to most of no. In striking contrast to these conditions, the tribes of ocean are all devourers of each other, and, with the exception of the mammalia and the sharks, make no distinction in favour of their own fruit. One single instance among the inhabitants of the sea furnishes us with a variation. The halicone, dugong. or manatee (Sirenia), now nearly extinct, are without doubt, eaters of herbage only. This they gather along the shores whose waters are their habitat, or cull from the shallow sea bottoms. For all the rest, they are mutually de- pendent upon each other's flesh for life, unscrupulous, unsatisfied, and vigorous beyond belief. " Vas Victis " is their motto, and the absence of all other food their sole and sufficient excuse. Viewed dispassionately, this law of inter- dependence direct is a beneficent one in spite of its apparent cruelty. Vast as is the sea, the fecundity of most of its denizens is well known to be so great that without effective checks always in operation it must rapidly become putrid and pestilential from the immense accumulation of decaying animal matter. As things are, the life of a fish from first to last is a series of miraculous escapes. As ova, their enemies are so numerous, even their own parents greedily devouring the quickening spawn, that it is hard to understand how any are overlooked and allowed to become fish. Yet as fry, after providing food for countless hordes of hungry foes, they are still sufficiently numerous to impress the imagination as being in number like the sands of the sea. And so, always being devoured by millions, they progress towards maturity, at which perhaps one billionth of those deposited as ova arrive. This infinitesimal remnant is a mighty host requiring such supplies of living organisms for its daily food as would make an astronomer dizzy to enumerate. And every one is fat and vigorous; must be, since none but the fittest can have survived. Their glittering myriads move in mysteriously ordered march along regular routes, still furnishing food for an escort of insatiable monsters such as whales, sharks, Lie.; while legions of sea-fowl above descend and clamorously
take their tiny toll. In due season they arrive within the range of man. He spreads his nets and loads his vessels, 'but all his spoils, however great they may appear to him, are but the crumbs of the feast, the skimmings of the pot.
This marvellous system of supply and demand is, of course, seen in its highest development near land, or at any rate
where the bed of the sea is comparatively near the surface, as
on the Banks of Newfoundland, the Agulhas Banks, and many others. But in the deepest waters of the ocean far from any shore there are immense numbers of swift predatory
fish, such as the bonito, the dolphin (coryphzna), and the
albacore. Mammalia also, like the porpoise, grampus, and rorqual, require enormous supplies of fish for their sus- tenance, and never fail to find them. As we ascend the scale of size the struggle becomes majestic, a war of Titans, such as no arena on earth has seen since the
Deluge. The imagination recoils dismayed before the thought of such a spectacle as is afforded by the gigantic cachalot descending to the murky depths where in awful state the hideous Kraken broods. No other name befits this inexpressible monster as well as the old Norse epithet bestowed in bygone days upon the greatest of the mollusca by terrified fisher-folk of Scandinavia. Vast, formless, and insatiable, he crouches in those fathomless silences like the living embodiment of sin, an ever-craving abysmal mouth sur- rounded by a. Medusa-like web of unresting arms. His enormous flaccid balk needs a continual holocaust to supply its flood of digestive juices, and that need is abundantly supplied. Then comes the doughty leviathan from above, and in noiseless majesty of power, disdaining subterfuge, rushes straight to the attack, every inch of his great frame mutely testifying to the enormous pressure of the superincumbent sea. Sometimes, stifling for air, the whale rises to the surface dragging upward his writhing prey, though almost as bulky as himself. In his train follow the lesser monsters eager for their share, and none of the fragments are lost.
But see the grampus hurl himself like some flying elephant into the " brown " of a school of scared porpoises. In vain do they flee at headlong speed anywhither. The enemy pursues, he overtakes, he swallows at a gulp, even as do his victims the lesser creatures upon which they fatten in their turn. So with the huge mackerel, which seamen call the albacore, although as far as one can see there is no difference between him and the tunny of the Mediterranean but in size. What havoc he makes among a school of his congeners the bonito. A hungry lion leaping into the midst of a flock of deer will seize one, and retire to devour it quietly. But this monster
• clashes his jaws continually as he rushes to and fro among the panic-stricken hosts, scattering their palpitating frag- ments around him in showers. In like manner do his victims play the destroyers' part in their turn. Yonder flight of silvery creatures whose myriads cast a dense shade over the bright sea. are fleeing for life, for beneath them, agape for their inevit- able return, are the serried ranks of their ravenous pursuers. Birds intercept the aerial course of the fugitives, who are in evil case indeed whithersoever they flee. But descending the scale, we shall find the persecuted Exoceta also on the warpath in their thousands after still smaller prey.
Time would fail to tell of the ravages of the swordfish, also a. mackerel of great size and ferocity, who launches himself torpedo-like at the bulky whale, the scavenger-shark, or a comrade, with strict impartiality. And of the " killer " whale, eater of the tongue only of the mysticetus; the thresher- shark, aider and abettor of the killer; or the sawfish, who disembowels his prey that his feeble teeth may have tender food. Their warfare knows no armistice, they live but to eat and be eaten in their turn, and as to eat they must fight, the battle rages evermore. The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty, but they are peaceful compared with the dark places of the sea.
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