344 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



experience. On and on we go until, at a depth of 

 a quarter of a mile, darkness, to our eyes, reigns 

 supreme. But delicate photographic plates are af- 

 fected well beyond half a mile by the chemical rays 

 at the farthest end of the spectrum. Even on the 

 blackest midnight on land there are ultra-violet 

 rays playing everywhere, but a mile down the dark- 

 ness is absolute ; the temperature has lowered many 

 degrees toward the freezing point and now on every 

 inch of surface there is a terrible pressure of over a 

 ton. Down and down we sink, our feet touching 

 bottom, in some places, over six miles below the 

 warm, sunlit surface. Even here weird worms, 

 fish, crabs — uncouth and unearthly, live out their 

 lives in the midst of eternal silence, blackness and 

 quiet — feeding on the refrigerated remains of ani- 

 mals, which fall from unimagined regions overhead. 



Although the sun is wholly blotted out, yet as 

 we get light from coal fires on the darkest night, so 

 in the depths we distinguish dim lights here and 

 there, and for mile after mile the great watery 

 spaces are faintly illumined with the yellowish- 

 green glow from countless millions of living candles 

 on the skin and scales and fins of wandering fish, 

 worms and shrimps. 



With the passing of the warmer light rays, plant 

 life ceases, so below this point all the living crea- 

 tures are carnivorous, and beneath a certain depth 

 they become subject to a death so terrible as to seem 

 appropriate to these regions. If from injury or 

 other reason their tissues develop gases, they be- 

 gin to fall upward. Once beyond the pressure to 



