* * * * *
I immediately started struggling to break free. She had enclosed me in her fist, too tightly. I couldn't breathe! Yet, while her skin proved surprisingly soft, my blows still seemed to have no effect. Initially, anyway. Then, I felt my compact prison shift at what felt like a ninety-degree angle. And, that's when it happened.
The light returned. I was free!
As soon as that realization struck me, however, things went dark again. Followed by another right angle shift. But, this time, in the opposite direction of the first! As a result?
I wound up somersaulting into the lower right corner of my cabin's bed.
That's right. I was still aboard the R.V. Humu-humu-nuku-nuku-apua'a. And the shifting back and forth (which I now started to experience for the second time) was from a storm that we had apparently run into in the middle of the night! The turbulence of which had evidently made me tumble out of bed, eneveloped in the top sheet and blanket. Hence, the claustrophobia that had suddenly overcome me at the tail end of my weird dream. All of this, going through my mind as quick as the second flash of lightning that lit up my cabin. Followed, seconds later, by a near-deafening peal of thunder! So, needless to say, I didn't get any sleep for the rest of that night.
I simply got back in bed and hung on for dear life to the head board.
By sunrise, the storm had abated. Consequently, the Pacific Ocean seemed to, once more, be living up to the name Magellan had first given it. So, naturally, we took advantage of that calmness to clean up everything that the storm had tossed about, both on deck and below it. Following which, we examined all the scientific equipment we had brought with us. Fortunately, however, the padded boxes--and the nylon cords we had taken the further precaution of lashing them down with--had done their job. As far as we could tell during the double-check, no damage (irreparable or otherwise) had been done.
Yet, when it came to the debris that the storm had tossed on to the boat from the surrounding waters, that brought a more startling discovery.
"Professor Stewart! Professor Stewart!" Shawna yelled out to him, with obviously mounting excitement: "Come here! Quickly!"
He ran up to the top of the aft companionway, with me close on his heels. And what she displayed made both of us gasp in unison. Because there, at the bottom of the dustpan she was holding, were two flesh-and blood specimens...
...of Protosyngnathus manticora!
Needless to say, the professor and I were both flabbergasted. Him, for zoological reasons. And me, because of that weird dream I'd had! Was I getting psychic or something? But, of course, that question would have to be answered at a later date. Because, right now, I had to help the professor analyze these specimens in the on-board lab, ASAP!
So, that's where the two of us went. Followed by Shawna, Kalama and Celeste, right on our heels. And, of course, the first thing we did was to put one of these supposedly extinct seahorses in an aquarium full of salt water. While we examined the other under a binocular microscope.
"Well?!" I finally demanded, after what felt like an eternity (though it was probably no more than thirty seconds, in real time, at most).
Professor Stewart stepped aside and let me take a look. And, there, I saw it for myself. The barbed tail that Scott and Davis had written about in their article for NATIONAL LINNAEAN! I then stepped aside to let each of the ladies have a look for themselves.
"You know what this means," he semi-rhetorically asked me: "Don't you, Ken?"
I nodded: "We have _two_ new marine species who've been living in total isolation all these years. C. capillata gundersoni..."
"...and a living fossil that just might be a literal missing link between Syngnathiformes and Scorpaeniformes!" he concluded for me.
Kalama looked at us, seemingly about to add a comment of her own to our conversation. But, the ship's current look-out beat her to it.
"LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
tbc
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
FEBRUARY 16, 1981