"That was it. We"ll stroll around after lunch and look it over."
If I had taken this cruise in search of distraction--I was surely going to be successful! That was plain!
"Just where are we going?" I asked. "You said something about the South Seas, but you"ve named no special part of them."
"We"re bound for Penguin Deep. That"s a delightful little dimple in the Kermadec Trough, which," Stanley explained, "is north-northeast of New Zealand almost halfway up to the Fiji Islands. Penguin Deep is ticketed at five thousand one hundred and fifty feet, but it probably runs deeper in spots."
The rest of the meal was consumed in silence. I hardly tasted what I ate; I remember that. Over five thousand feet down--where no man had ever ventured before! Could we make it?
I tried to recall my neglected physics lessons and compute the pressure that far down. I couldn"t. But I knew it must be an appalling total of tons to the square inch. What possible arrangement could they have brought in which to make that awful descent?
And, if the descent were accomplished, what in the world would we see when we got down there? Gigantic, hitherto unknown fishes? Marine growths, half animal and half vegetable?
Decidedly, hot rolls and salad, cutlets and baked potatoes, good as they were, could not distract attention from the crowding questions that a.s.sailed me. And I could see that Stanley and the Professor were also far away in their thoughts--probably already exploring Penguin Deep.
After lunch we went forward to look at the Professor"s gadget, as Stanley insisted on calling it.
It had been carefully unpacked by the crew while we ate, and it shimmered in the electric lighted hold like a great bubble.
It was a giant gla.s.s sphere, polished and flawless. Inside it could be made out various objects--a circular bench arrangement on a wooden flooring, batteries that filled the cup between the floor and the bottom arc of the sphere, tall metal cylinders, a small searchlight set next to a mechanism that was indeterminate. At three equidistant points on the sides there were gla.s.s handles, as thick as a man"s thigh, cast integral with the walls. On the top there was a smaller handle.
At first glance the sphere seemed all in one piece, with the central objects cast inside like a toy ship in a sealed bottle. Then a mathematically precise ring of prismatic reflections showed me that the top third of the ball was a separate piece, fitting conically down like the tapered gla.s.s stopper of a monstrous perfume bottle. The handle on the top was for the purpose of lifting this giant"s teapot lid, and allowing entrance into the sphere.
"Isn"t it a beauty?" murmured Stanley. "It ought to be," he added. "It cost me eighty-six thousand to make it in my own gla.s.s factory. Eleven castings before this one came along that was reasonably free of flaws.
Twenty-two feet six inches over all, walls five feet thick, new formula unbreakable gla.s.s, four men working a month to grind the lid into place, tolerance limits plus or minus zero."
He slapped the Professor"s shoulders. "Let"s go in and look over the apparatus."
To accommodate the huge ball a well had been constructed in the Rosa"s hold. This brought the deck we were standing on up to within six feet of the top ring, above which was rigged a chain hoist for lifting the ponderous lid.
The hoist was revolved, the conical top was swung free, and we clambered into our unique diving sh.e.l.l.
The tall cylinders were revealed as great flasks of compressed air. The indeterminate thing beside the searchlight turned out to be a hand pump, geared to work against heavy pressure. From the suction chamber of this three tubes extended.
"We inhale the air of the chamber," the Professor explained to me, "and exhale through the tubes into the pump cylinder. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. The pump piston is forced down by this geared handle, sending the used air out of the sh.e.l.l through this sixteenth-inch hole. A ball check valve keeps the water from squirting in when the exhaust pressure is released."
He pointed to a telegraphic key which completed a circuit from the batteries in the bottom of the ball to a thread of copper cast through the lid.
"That"s your plaything, Martin. You are to raise or lower us by pressing that key. It controls the donkey engine electrically, so that we guide our own destinies though we are a mile beneath our power plant. Stanley works the pump. I direct the searchlight, write down notes, and, I sincerely hope, take snapshots of deep sea life."
For a moment my part of the labor seemed so easy as to be unfair. Merely to sit there and punch a little key at raising and lowering time! But as I thought it over it began to appear more difficult.
The _Rosa_ could not anchor, of course, in a mile of water. We would drift helplessly. If we approached an undersea cliff I must raise us at once to prevent us being smashed against it. And if the cliff were too lofty to be cleared in time....
I mentioned this to the Professor.
"That would be unfortunate," he said, with his frosty smile. "Stanley a.s.sures us this gla.s.s is unbreakable. He means commercially unbreakable.
What would happen to it if it were submitted to the strain of being flung against a rock pile--in addition to the enormous stress of the water pressure--I don"t know. It"s your job to see that we don"t have to find out!"
It had been planned to test the sphere empty first to see how it stood the strain.
We drifted to a full stop over the center of Penguin Deep where we were to gamble our lives in a game with Neptune. Sea anchors were rigged to lessen our drift and the donkey engine was geared to the first cable drum.
There was an impressive row of these drums, each holding an interminable length of three-quarter-inch cable. The bulk of a mile of steel cable has to be seen to be believed!
The gla.s.s sphere was lifted from the hold, delicately for all its enormous weight, and swung over the rail preparatory to being lowered into the depths.
Not until that moment did I notice two things: that there was no fastening of any kind to keep the thick lid in place: and that the three-quarter-inch cable looked like a pack thread in comparison to the ponderous bulk it strained to support.
"We couldn"t use a heavier cable," said the Professor, "because of the strain. We"re overloading the hoist as it is. As for the lid being fastened down--I think you"ll find it will be pressed into place securely enough!"
There was unanimous silence as the great globe slipped into the sea--down and down until the last reflection of the morning sun ceased to shimmer from its surface. Drum after drum was played out, till the first mate held his hand up to check the engineer.
"Five thousand feet, sir," he called to Stanley.
"Haul it back up. And let us hope," Stanley added fervently, "that we"ll find the gadget in one piece."
The engine began to snort rhythmically. Dripping, vibrating, the coils of cable began to crawl back in place on the drums. There was a glint under the surface again as the sunlight reflected on the nearing sphere.
The great ball flashed out of the water, and a cheer burst from the throats of all of us. It was absolutely unharmed. Only--there was a beading of fine moisture inside the thick globe. What that could mean, none of us could figure out.
"Difference in temperature?" worried the Professor. "No, it"s as cold inside as out. Molecules of water driven by sheer pressure through five feet of gla.s.s to unite in drops on the inside? Possibly. Well, there"s one way to find out. Stanley, Martin--are you ready?"
We nodded, and prepared to visit the bottom a mile below the _Rosa"s_ keel. The preparation consisted merely in donning heavy, fleece-lined jumpers to protect us from the cold of the sunless depths.
Soberly we entered the ball to undergo whatever ordeal awaited us on the distant ocean floor. How comparative distance is! A mile walk in the country--it is nothing. A mile ascent in an airplane--a trifle. But a mile descent into pitch black, bone chilling depths of water--that is an immense distance!
Copper wire, on a separate drum, was connected from the engine switch to the copper thread that curled through the gla.s.s wall to my telegraphic key. We strapped the mouthpieces of the breathing tubes over our heads, and Browne started the slow turning of the compression pump.
The Professor snapped the searchlight on and off several times to see that it was in working shape. He raised his hand, I pressed the key, and the long descent began.
That plunge into the bottomless depths remains in my memory almost as clearly as the far more fantastic adventures that came to us later.
Smoothly, rapidly, the yellow-green of the surface water dimmed to olive. This in turn grew blacker and blacker. Then we were slipping down into pitch darkness--a big bubble lit by a meagre lamp and containing three fragile human beings that dared to trust the soft pulp of their bodies to the crushing weight of the deepest ocean.
The most impressive thing was the utter soundlessness of our descent. At first there had been a pulsing throb of the donkey engine transmitted to us by the sustaining cable. This died as we slid farther from the Rosa.
At length it was hushed entirely, cushioned by the springy length of steel. There was no stir, no sound of any kind. As far as our senses could tell us, we were hanging motionless in the pressing, awesome blackness.