TO DAVY JONES S LOCKER IO7 



or otherwise, we were lowered 20 feet. I sensed the weight 

 and sturdy resistance of the bathysphere more at this mo- 

 ment than at any other time. We were lowered gently 

 but we struck the surface with a splash which would 

 have crushed a rowboat like an eggshell. Yet within we 

 hardly noticed the impact, until a froth of foam and 

 bubbles surged up over the glass and our chamber was 

 dimmed to a pleasant green. We swung quietly while the 

 first hose clamp was put on the cable. At the end of the 

 first revolution the great hull of the barge came into view. 

 This was a familiar landscape, which I had often seen 

 from the diving helmet — a transitory, swaying reef with 

 waving banners of seaweed, long tubular sponges, jet black 

 blobs of ascidians and tissue-thin plates of rough-spined 

 pearl shells. Then the keel passed slowly upward, becoming 

 one with the green water overhead. 



With this passed our last visible link with the upper 

 world; from now on we had to depend on distant spoken 

 words for knowledge of our depth, or speed, or the 

 weather, or the sunlight, or anything having to do with 

 the world of air on the surface of the Earth. 



A few seconds after we lost sight of the hull of the 

 Ready, word came down the hose that we were at 50 feet, 

 and I looked out at the brilliant bluish-green haze and 

 could not realize that this was almost my limit in the div- 

 ing helmet. Then "100 feet" was called out, and still the 

 only change was a slight twilighting and chilling of the 

 green. As we sank slowly I knew that we must be passing 



