IN THE ABYSS
The lieutenant stood in front of the steel sphere and gnawed a piece ofpine splinter. "What do you think of it, Steevens?" he asked.
"It's an idea," said Steevens, in the tone of one who keeps an openmind.
"I believe it will smash--flat," said the lieutenant.
"He seems to have calculated it all out pretty well," said Steevens,still impartial.
"But think of the pressure," said the lieutenant. "At the surfaceof the water it's fourteen pounds to the inch, thirty feet downit's double that; sixty, treble; ninety, four times; nine hundred,forty times; five thousand, three hundred--that's a mile--it's twohundred and forty times fourteen pounds; that's--let's see--thirtyhundredweight--a ton and a half, Steevens; _a ton and a half_ to thesquare inch. And the ocean where he's going is five miles deep. That'sseven and a half"--
"Sounds a lot," said Steevens, "but it's jolly thick steel."
The lieutenant made no answer, but resumed his pine splinter. Theobject of their conversation was a huge ball of steel, having anexterior diameter of perhaps nine feet. It looked like the shotfor some Titanic piece of artillery. It was elaborately nested in amonstrous scaffolding built into the framework of the vessel, andthe gigantic spars that were presently to sling it overboard gavethe stern of the ship an appearance that had raised the curiosityof every decent sailor who had sighted it, from the Pool of Londonto the Tropic of Capricorn. In two places, one above the other, thesteel gave place to a couple of circular windows of enormously thickglass, and one of these, set in a steel frame of great solidity, wasnow partially unscrewed. Both the men had seen the interior of thisglobe for the first time that morning. It was elaborately padded withair cushions, with little studs sunk between bulging pillows to workthe simple mechanism of the affair. Everything was elaborately padded,even the Myers apparatus which was to absorb carbonic acid and replacethe oxygen inspired by its tenant, when he had crept in by the glassmanhole, and had been screwed in. It was so elaborately padded that aman might have been fired from a gun in it with perfect safety. And ithad need to be, for presently a man was to crawl in through that glassmanhole, to be screwed up tightly, and to be flung overboard, and tosink down--down--down, for five miles, even as the lieutenant said. Ithad taken the strongest hold of his imagination; it made him a bore atmess; and he found Steevens, the new arrival aboard, a godsend to talkto about it, over and over again.
"It's my opinion," said the lieutenant, "that that glass will simplybend in and bulge and smash, under a pressure of that sort. Daubreehas made rocks run like water under big pressures--and, you mark mywords"--
"If the glass did break in," said Steevens, "what then?"
"The water would shoot in like a jet of iron. Have you ever felt astraight jet of high pressure water? It would hit as hard as a bullet.It would simply smash him and flatten him. It would tear down histhroat, and into his lungs; it would blow in his ears"--
"What a detailed imagination you have!" protested Steevens, who sawthings vividly.
"It's a simple statement of the inevitable," said the lieutenant.
"And the globe?"
"Would just give out a few little bubbles, and it would settle downcomfortably against the day of judgment, among the oozes and the bottomclay--with poor Elstead spread over his own smashed cushions likebutter over bread."
He repeated this sentence as though he liked it very much. "Like butterover bread," he said.
"Having a look at the jigger?" said a voice, and Elstead stood behindthem, spick and span in white, with a cigarette between his teeth,and his eyes smiling out of the shadow of his ample hat-brim. "What'sthat about bread and butter, Weybridge? Grumbling as usual about theinsufficient pay of naval officers? It won't be more than a day nowbefore I start. We are to get the slings ready to-day. This clean skyand gentle swell is just the kind of thing for swinging off a dozentons of lead and iron; isn't it?"
"It won't affect you much," said Weybridge.
"No. Seventy or eighty feet down, and I shall be there in a dozenseconds, there's not a particle moving, though the wind shriek itselfhoarse up above, and the water lifts halfway to the clouds. No. Downthere"-- He moved to the side of the ship and the other two followedhim. All three leant forward on their elbows and stared down into theyellow-green water.
"_Peace_," said Elstead, finishing his thought aloud.
"Are you dead certain that clockwork will act?" asked Weybridgepresently.
"It has worked thirty-five times," said Elstead. "It's bound to work."
"But if it doesn't?"
"Why shouldn't it?"
"I wouldn't go down in that confounded thing," said Weybridge, "fortwenty thousand pounds."
"Cheerful chap you are," said Elstead, and spat sociably at a bubblebelow.
"I don't understand yet how you mean to work the thing," said Steevens.
"In the first place, I'm screwed into the sphere," said Elstead, "andwhen I've turned the electric light off and on three times to show I'mcheerful, I'm swung out over the stern by that crane, with all thosebig lead sinkers slung below me. The top lead weight has a rollercarrying a hundred fathoms of strong cord rolled up, and that's allthat joins the sinkers to the sphere, except the slings that will becut when the affair is dropped. We use cord rather than wire ropebecause it's easier to cut and more buoyant--necessary points, as youwill see.
"Through each of these lead weights you notice there is a hole, andan iron rod will be run through that and will project six feet on thelower side. If that rod is rammed up from below, it knocks up a leverand sets the clockwork in motion at the side of the cylinder on whichthe cord winds.
"Very well. The whole affair is lowered gently into the water, and theslings are cut. The sphere floats,--with the air in it, it's lighterthan water,--but the lead weights go down straight and the cord runsout. When the cord is all paid out, the sphere will go down too, pulleddown by the cord."
"But why the cord?" asked Steevens. "Why not fasten the weightsdirectly to the sphere?"
"Because of the smash down below. The whole affair will go rushingdown, mile after mile, at a headlong pace at last. It would be knockedto pieces on the bottom if it wasn't for that cord. But the weightswill hit the bottom, and directly they do, the buoyancy of the spherewill come into play. It will go on sinking slower and slower; come to astop at last, and then begin to float upward again.
"That's where the clockwork comes in. Directly the weights smashagainst the sea bottom, the rod will be knocked through and will kickup the clockwork, and the cord will be rewound on the reel. I shall belugged down to the sea bottom. There I shall stay for half an hour,with the electric light on, looking about me. Then the clockworkwill release a spring knife, the cord will be cut, and up I shallrush again, like a soda-water bubble. The cord itself will help theflotation."
"And if you should chance to hit a ship?" said Weybridge.
"I should come up at such a pace, I should go clean through it," saidElstead, "like a cannon ball. You needn't worry about that."
"And suppose some nimble crustacean should wriggle into yourclockwork"--
"It would be a pressing sort of invitation for me to stop," saidElstead, turning his back on the water and staring at the sphere.
* * * * *
They had swung Elstead overboard by eleven o'clock. The day wasserenely bright and calm, with the horizon lost in haze. The electricglare in the little upper compartment beamed cheerfully three times.Then they let him down slowly to the surface of the water, and a sailorin the stern chains hung ready to cut the tackle that held the leadweights and the sphere together. The globe, which had looked so largeon deck, looked the smallest thing conceivable under the stern of theship. It rolled a little, and its two dark windows, which floateduppermost, seemed like eyes turned up in round wonderment at the peoplewho crowded the rail. A voice wondered how Elstead liked the rolling."Are you ready?" sang out the commander. "Ay, ay, sir!" "Then let hergo!"
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sp; The rope of the tackle tightened against the blade and was cut, and aneddy rolled over the globe in a grotesquely helpless fashion. Someonewaved a handkerchief, someone else tried an ineffectual cheer, a middywas counting slowly, "Eight, nine, ten!" Another roll, then with a jerkand a splash the thing righted itself.
It seemed to be stationary for a moment, to grow rapidly smaller, andthen the water closed over it, and it became visible, enlarged byrefraction and dimmer, below the surface. Before one could count threeit had disappeared. There was a flicker of white light far down in thewater, that diminished to a speck and vanished. Then there was nothingbut a depth of water going down into blackness, through which a sharkwas swimming.
Then suddenly the screw of the cruiser began to rotate, the water wascrickled, the shark disappeared in a wrinkled confusion, and a torrentof foam rushed across the crystalline clearness that had swallowed upElstead. "What's the idee?" said one A.B. to another.
"We're going to lay off about a couple of miles, 'fear he should hit uswhen he comes up," said his mate.
The ship steamed slowly to her new position. Aboard her almost everyonewho was unoccupied remained watching the breathing swell into whichthe sphere had sunk. For the next half-hour it is doubtful if a wordwas spoken that did not bear directly or indirectly on Elstead. TheDecember sun was now high in the sky, and the heat very considerable.
"He'll be cold enough down there," said Weybridge. "They say that belowa certain depth sea water's always just about freezing."
"Where'll he come up?" asked Steevens. "I've lost my bearings."
"That's the spot," said the commander, who prided himself on hisomniscience. He extended a precise finger south-eastward. "And this, Ireckon, is pretty nearly the moment," he said. "He's been thirty-fiveminutes."
"How long does it take to reach the bottom of the ocean?" askedSteevens.
"For a depth of five miles, and reckoning--as we did--an accelerationof two feet per second, both ways, is just about three-quarters of aminute."
"Then he's overdue," said Weybridge.
"Pretty nearly," said the commander. "I suppose it takes a few minutesfor that cord of his to wind in."
"I forgot that," said Weybridge, evidently relieved.
And then began the suspense. A minute slowly dragged itself out, and nosphere shot out of the water. Another followed, and nothing broke thelow oily swell. The sailors explained to one another that little pointabout the winding-in of the cord. The rigging was dotted with expectantfaces. "Come up, Elstead!" called one hairy-chested salt impatiently,and the others caught it up, and shouted as though they were waitingfor the curtain of a theatre to rise.
The commander glanced irritably at them.
"Of course, if the acceleration's less than two," he said, "he'llbe all the longer. We aren't absolutely certain that was the properfigure. I'm no slavish believer in calculations."
Steevens agreed concisely. No one on the quarter-deck spoke for acouple of minutes. Then Steevens' watchcase clicked.
When, twenty-one minutes after, the sun reached the zenith, they werestill waiting for the globe to reappear, and not a man aboard haddared to whisper that hope was dead. It was Weybridge who first gaveexpression to that realisation. He spoke while the sound of eight bellsstill hung in the air. "I always distrusted that window," he said quitesuddenly to Steevens.
"Good God!" said Steevens; "you don't think--?"
"Well!" said Weybridge, and left the rest to his imagination.
"I'm no great believer in calculations myself," said the commanderdubiously, "so that I'm not altogether hopeless yet." And at midnightthe gunboat was steaming slowly in a spiral round the spot wherethe globe had sunk, and the white beam of the electric light fledand halted and swept discontentedly onward again over the waste ofphosphorescent waters under the little stars.
"If his window hasn't burst and smashed him," said Weybridge, "thenit's a cursed sight worse, for his clockwork has gone wrong, and he'salive now, five miles under our feet, down there in the cold and dark,anchored in that little bubble of his, where never a ray of light hasshone or a human being lived, since the waters were gathered together.He's there without food, feeling hungry and thirsty and scared,wondering whether he'll starve or stifle. Which will it be? The Myersapparatus is running out, I suppose. How long do they last?"
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed; "what little things we are! What daringlittle devils! Down there, miles and miles of water--all water, andall this empty water about us and this sky. Gulfs!" He threw his handsout, and as he did so, a little white streak swept noiselessly up thesky, travelled more slowly, stopped, became a motionless dot, as thougha new star had fallen up into the sky. Then it went sliding back againand lost itself amidst the reflections of the stars and the white hazeof the sea's phosphorescence.
At the sight he stopped, arm extended and mouth open. He shut hismouth, opened it again, and waved his arms with an impatient gesture.Then he turned, shouted "El-stead ahoy!" to the first watch, andwent at a run to Lindley and the search-light. "I saw him," he said."Starboard there! His light's on, and he's just shot out of the water.Bring the light round. We ought to see him drifting, when he lifts onthe swell."
But they never picked up the explorer until dawn. Then they almost ranhim down. The crane was swung out and a boat's crew hooked the chainto the sphere. When they had shipped the sphere, they unscrewed themanhole and peered into the darkness of the interior (for the electriclight chamber was intended to illuminate the water about the sphere,and was shut off entirely from its general cavity).
The air was very hot within the cavity, and the indiarubber at the lipof the manhole was soft. There was no answer to their eager questionsand no sound of movement within. Elstead seemed to be lying motionless,crumpled up in the bottom of the globe. The ship's doctor crawled inand lifted him out to the men outside. For a moment or so they did notknow whether Elstead was alive or dead. His face, in the yellow lightof the ship's lamps, glistened with perspiration. They carried him downto his own cabin.
He was not dead, they found, but in a state of absolute nervouscollapse, and besides cruelly bruised. For some days he had to lieperfectly still. It was a week before he could tell his experiences.
Almost his first words were that he was going down again. The spherewould have to be altered, he said, in order to allow him to throw offthe cord if need be, and that was all. He had had the most marvellousexperience. "You thought I should find nothing but ooze," he said. "Youlaughed at my explorations, and I've discovered a new world!" He toldhis story in disconnected fragments, and chiefly from the wrong end, sothat it is impossible to re-tell it in his words. But what follows isthe narrative of his experience.
It began atrociously, he said. Before the cord ran out, the thing keptrolling over. He felt like a frog in a football. He could see nothingbut the crane and the sky overhead, with an occasional glimpse of thepeople on the ship's rail. He couldn't tell a bit which way the thingwould roll next. Suddenly he would find his feet going up, and try tostep, and over he went rolling, head over heels, and just anyhow, onthe padding. Any other shape would have been more comfortable, butno other shape was to be relied upon under the huge pressure of thenethermost abyss.
Suddenly the swaying ceased; the globe righted, and when he hadpicked himself up, he saw the water all about him greeny-blue, withan attenuated light filtering down from above, and a shoal of littlefloating things went rushing up past him, as it seemed to him, towardsthe light. And even as he looked, it grew darker and darker, untilthe water above was as dark as the midnight sky, albeit of a greenershade, and the water below black. And little transparent things in thewater developed a faint glint of luminosity, and shot past him in faintgreenish streaks.
And the feeling of falling! It was just like the start of a lift, hesaid, only it kept on. One has to imagine what that means, that keepingon. It was then of all times that Elstead repented of his adventure. Hesaw the chances against him in an altogether new light. He thought ofthe big c
uttlefish people knew to exist in the middle waters, the kindof things they find half digested in whales at times, or floating deadand rotten and half eaten by fish. Suppose one caught hold and wouldn'tlet go. And had the clockwork really been sufficiently tested? Butwhether he wanted to go on or to go back mattered not the slightest now.
In fifty seconds everything was as black as night outside, except wherethe beam from his light struck through the waters, and picked out everynow and then some fish or scrap of sinking matter. They flashed by toofast for him to see what they were. Once he thinks he passed a shark.And then the sphere began to get hot by friction against the water.They had underestimated this, it seems.
The first thing he noticed was that he was perspiring, and then heheard a hissing growing louder under his feet, and saw a lot of littlebubbles--very little bubbles they were--rushing upward like a fanthrough the water outside. Steam! He felt the window, and it was hot.He turned on the minute glow-lamp that lit his own cavity, looked atthe padded watch by the studs, and saw he had been travelling now fortwo minutes. It came into his head that the window would crack throughthe conflict of temperatures, for he knew the bottom water is very nearfreezing.
Then suddenly the floor of the sphere seemed to press against his feet,the rush of bubbles outside grew slower and slower, and the hissingdiminished. The sphere rolled a little. The window had not cracked,nothing had given, and he knew that the dangers of sinking, at anyrate,were over.
In another minute or so he would be on the floor of the abyss. Hethought, he said, of Steevens and Weybridge and the rest of them fivemiles overhead, higher to him than the very highest clouds that everfloated over land are to us, steaming slowly and staring down andwondering what had happened to him.
He peered out of the window. There were no more bubbles now, and thehissing had stopped. Outside there was a heavy blackness--as black asblack velvet--except where the electric light pierced the empty waterand showed the colour of it--a yellow-green. Then three things likeshapes of fire swam into sight, following each other through the water.Whether they were little and near or big and far off he could not tell.
Each was outlined in a bluish light almost as bright as the lights ofa fishing smack, a light which seemed to be smoking greatly, and allalong the sides of them were specks of this, like the lighter portholesof a ship. Their phosphorescence seemed to go out as they came intothe radiance of his lamp, and he saw then that they were little fishof some strange sort, with huge heads, vast eyes, and dwindling bodiesand tails. Their eyes were turned towards him, and he judged they werefollowing him down. He supposed they were attracted by his glare.
Presently others of the same sort joined them. As he went on down,he noticed that the water became of a pallid colour, and that littlespecks twinkled in his ray like motes in a sunbeam. This was probablydue to the clouds of ooze and mud that the impact of his leaden sinkershad disturbed.
By the time he was drawn down to the lead weights he was in a dense fogof white that his electric light failed altogether to pierce for morethan a few yards, and many minutes elapsed before the hanging sheetsof sediment subsided to any extent. Then, lit by his light and by thetransient phosphorescence of a distant shoal of fishes, he was able tosee under the huge blackness of the super-incumbent water an undulatingexpanse of greyish-white ooze, broken here and there by tangledthickets of a growth of sea lilies, waving hungry tentacles in the air.
Farther away were the graceful, translucent outlines of a group ofgigantic sponges. About this floor there were scattered a number ofbristling flattish tufts of rich purple and black, which he decidedmust be some sort of sea-urchin, and small, large-eyed or blind thingshaving a curious resemblance, some to woodlice, and others to lobsters,crawled sluggishly across the track of the light and vanished into theobscurity again, leaving furrowed trails behind them.
Then suddenly the hovering swarm of little fishes veered about and cametowards him as a flight of starlings might do. They passed over himlike a phosphorescent snow, and then he saw behind them some largercreature advancing towards the sphere.
At first he could see it only dimly, a faintly moving figure remotelysuggestive of a walking man, and then it came into the spray of lightthat the lamp shot out. As the glare struck it, it shut its eyes,dazzled. He stared in rigid astonishment.
It was a strange vertebrated animal. Its dark purple head was dimlysuggestive of a chameleon, but it had such a high forehead and such abraincase as no reptile ever displayed before; the vertical pitch ofits face gave it a most extraordinary resemblance to a human being.
Two large and protruding eyes projected from sockets in chameleonfashion, and it had a broad reptilian mouth with horny lips beneath itslittle nostrils. In the position of the ears were two huge gill-covers,and out of these floated a branching tree of coralline filaments,almost like the tree-like gills that very young rays and sharks possess.
But the humanity of the face was not the most extraordinary thing aboutthe creature. It was a biped; its almost globular body was poised on atripod of two frog-like legs and a long thick tail, and its fore limbs,which grotesquely caricatured the human hand, much as a frog's do,carried a long shaft of bone, tipped with copper. The colour of thecreature was variegated; its head, hands, and legs were purple; butits skin, which hung loosely upon it, even as clothes might do, was aphosphorescent grey. And it stood there blinded by the light.
At last this unknown creature of the abyss blinked its eyes open,and, shading them with its disengaged hand, opened its mouth and gavevent to a shouting noise, articulate almost as speech might be, thatpenetrated even the steel case and padded jacket of the sphere. How ashouting may be accomplished without lungs Elstead does not profess toexplain. It then moved sideways out of the glare into the mystery ofshadow that bordered it on either side, and Elstead felt rather thansaw that it was coming towards him. Fancying the light had attractedit, he turned the switch that cut off the current. In another momentsomething soft dabbed upon the steel, and the globe swayed.
Then the shouting was repeated, and it seemed to him that a distantecho answered it. The dabbing recurred, and the globe swayed and groundagainst the spindle over which the wire was rolled. He stood in theblackness and peered out into the everlasting night of the abyss.And presently he saw, very faint and remote, other phosphorescentquasi-human forms hurrying towards him.
Hardly knowing what he did, he felt about in his swaying prison forthe stud of the exterior electric light, and came by accident againsthis own small glow-lamp in its padded recess. The sphere twisted, andthen threw him down; he heard shouts like shouts of surprise, and whenhe rose to his feet, he saw two pairs of stalked eyes peering into thelower window and reflecting his light.
In another moment hands were dabbing vigorously at his steel casing,and there was a sound, horrible enough in his position, of the metalprotection of the clockwork being vigorously hammered. That, indeed,sent his heart into his mouth, for if these strange creatures succeededin stopping that, his release would never occur. Scarcely had hethought as much when he felt the sphere sway violently, and the floorof it press hard against his feet. He turned off the small glow-lampthat lit the interior, and sent the ray of the large light in theseparate compartment out into the water. The sea-floor and the man-likecreatures had disappeared, and a couple of fish chasing each otherdropped suddenly by the window.
He thought at once that these strange denizens of the deep sea hadbroken the rope, and that he had escaped. He drove up faster andfaster, and then stopped with a jerk that sent him flying against thepadded roof of his prison. For half a minute, perhaps, he was tooastonished to think.
Then he felt that the sphere was spinning slowly, and rocking, andit seemed to him that it was also being drawn through the water. Bycrouching close to the window, he managed to make his weight effectiveand roll that part of the sphere downward, but he could see nothingsave the pale ray of his light striking down ineffectively into thedarkness. It occurred to him that he would see more if he
turned thelamp off, and allowed his eyes to grow accustomed to the profoundobscurity.
In this he was wise. After some minutes the velvety blackness became atranslucent blackness, and then, far away, and as faint as the zodiacallight of an English summer evening, he saw shapes moving below. Hejudged these creatures had detached his cable, and were towing himalong the sea bottom.
And then he saw something faint and remote across the undulations ofthe submarine plain, a broad horizon of pale luminosity that extendedthis way and that way as far as the range of his little windowpermitted him to see. To this he was being towed, as a balloon might betowed by men out of the open country into a town. He approached it veryslowly, and very slowly the dim irradiation was gathered together intomore definite shapes.
It was nearly five o'clock before he came over this luminous area, andby that time he could make out an arrangement suggestive of streetsand houses grouped about a vast roofless erection that was grotesquelysuggestive of a ruined abbey. It was spread out like a map below him.The houses were all roofless enclosures of walls, and their substancebeing, as he afterwards saw, of phosphorescent bones, gave the place anappearance as if it were built of drowned moonshine.
Among the inner caves of the place waving trees of crinoid stretchedtheir tentacles, and tall, slender, glassy sponges shot like shiningminarets and lilies of filmy light out of the general glow of thecity. In the open spaces of the place he could see a stirring movementas of crowds of people, but he was too many fathoms above them todistinguish the individuals in those crowds.
Then slowly they pulled him down, and as they did so, the details ofthe place crept slowly upon his apprehension. He saw that the coursesof the cloudy buildings were marked out with beaded lines of roundobjects, and then he perceived that at several points below him, inbroad open spaces, were forms like the encrusted shapes of ships.
Slowly and surely he was drawn down, and the forms below him becamebrighter, clearer, more distinct. He was being pulled down, heperceived, towards the large building in the centre of the town, and hecould catch a glimpse ever and again of the multitudinous forms thatwere lugging at his cord. He was astonished to see that the rigging ofone of the ships, which formed such a prominent feature of the place,was crowded with a host of gesticulating figures regarding him, andthen the walls of the great building rose about him silently, and hidthe city from his eyes.
And such walls they were, of water-logged wood, and twisted wire-rope,and iron spars, and copper, and the bones and skulls of dead men. Theskulls ran in zigzag lines and spirals and fantastic curves over thebuilding; and in and out of their eye-sockets, and over the wholesurface of the place, lurked and played a multitude of silvery littlefishes.
Suddenly his ears were filled with a low shouting and a noise like theviolent blowing of horns, and this gave place to a fantastic chant.Down the sphere sank, past the huge pointed windows, through which hesaw vaguely a great number of these strange, ghostlike people regardinghim, and at last he came to rest, as it seemed, on a kind of altar thatstood in the centre of the place.
And now he was at such a level that he could see these strange peopleof the abyss plainly once more. To his astonishment, he perceived thatthey were prostrating themselves before him, all save one, dressed asit seemed in a robe of placoid scales, and crowned with a luminousdiadem, who stood with his reptilian mouth opening and shutting, asthough he led the chanting of the worshippers.
A curious impulse made Elstead turn on his small glow-lamp again, sothat he became visible to these creatures of the abyss, albeit theglare made them disappear forthwith into night. At this sudden sightof him, the chanting gave place to a tumult of exultant shouts; andElstead, being anxious to watch them, turned his light off again, andvanished from before their eyes. But for a time he was too blind tomake out what they were doing, and when at last he could distinguishthem, they were kneeling again. And thus they continued worshippinghim, without rest or intermission, for the space of three hours.
Most circumstantial was Elstead's account of this astounding city andits people, these people of perpetual night, who have never seen sunor moon or stars, green vegetation, nor any living, air-breathingcreatures, who know nothing of fire, nor any light but thephosphorescent light of living things.
Startling as is his story, it is yet more startling to find thatscientific men, of such eminence as Adams and Jenkins, find nothingincredible in it. They tell me they see no reason why intelligent,water-breathing, vertebrated creatures, inured to a low temperature andenormous pressure, and of such a heavy structure, that neither alivenor dead would they float, might not live upon the bottom of the deepsea, and quite unsuspected by us, descendants like ourselves of thegreat Theriomorpha of the New Red Sandstone age.
We should be known to them, however, as strange, meteoric creatures,wont to fall catastrophically dead out of the mysterious blackness oftheir watery sky. And not only we ourselves, but our ships, our metals,our appliances, would come raining down out of the night. Sometimessinking things would smite down and crush them, as if it were thejudgment of some unseen power above, and sometimes would come things ofthe utmost rarity or utility, or shapes of inspiring suggestion. Onecan understand, perhaps, something of their behaviour at the descent ofa living man, if one thinks what a barbaric people might do, to whom anenhaloed, shining creature came suddenly out of the sky.
At one time or another Elstead probably told the officers of the_Ptarmigan_ every detail of his strange twelve hours in the abyss. Thathe also intended to write them down is certain, but he never did, andso unhappily we have to piece together the discrepant fragments of hisstory from the reminiscences of Commander Simmons, Weybridge, Steevens,Lindley, and the others.
We see the thing darkly in fragmentary glimpses--the huge ghostlybuilding, the bowing, chanting people, with their dark chameleon-likeheads and faintly luminous clothing, and Elstead, with his light turnedon again, vainly trying to convey to their minds that the cord by whichthe sphere was held was to be severed. Minute after minute slippedaway, and Elstead, looking at his watch, was horrified to find that hehad oxygen only for four hours more. But the chant in his honour kepton as remorselessly as if it was the marching song of his approachingdeath.
The manner of his release he does not understand, but to judge by theend of cord that hung from the sphere, it had been cut through byrubbing against the edge of the altar. Abruptly the sphere rolled over,and he swept up, out of their world, as an ethereal creature clothedin a vacuum would sweep through our own atmosphere back to its nativeether again. He must have torn out of their sight as a hydrogen bubblehastens upward from our air. A strange ascension it must have seemed tothem.
The sphere rushed up with even greater velocity than, when weightedwith the lead sinkers, it had rushed down. It became exceedingly hot.It drove up with the windows uppermost, and he remembers the torrent ofbubbles frothing against the glass. Every moment he expected this tofly. Then suddenly something like a huge wheel seemed to be releasedin his head, the padded compartment began spinning about him, and hefainted. His next recollection was of his cabin, and of the doctor'svoice.
But that is the substance of the extraordinary story that Elsteadrelated in fragments to the officers of the _Ptarmigan_. He promised towrite it all down at a later date. His mind was chiefly occupied withthe improvement of his apparatus, which was effected at Rio.
It remains only to tell that on February 2, 1896, he made his seconddescent into the ocean abyss, with the improvements his firstexperience suggested. What happened we shall probably never know.He never returned. The _Ptarmigan_ beat about over the point of hissubmersion, seeking him in vain for thirteen days. Then she returned toRio, and the news was telegraphed to his friends. So the matter remainsfor the present. But it is hardly probable that no further attemptwill be made to verify his strange story of these hitherto unsuspectedcities of the deep sea.