TO DAVY JONES S LOCKER 109 



Two minutes more and "400 feet" was called out; 500 

 and 600 feet came and passed overhead, then 700 feet 

 where we remained for a while. 



Ever since the beginnings of human history, when first 

 the Phoenicians dared to sail the open sea, thousands upon 

 thousands of human beings had reached the depth at which 

 we were now suspended, and had passed on to lower levels. 

 But all of these were dead, drowned victims of war, 

 tempest, or other Acts of God. We were the first living 

 men to look out at the strange illumination: And it was 

 stranger than any imagination could have conceived. It 

 was of an indefinable translucent blue quite unlike any- 

 thing I have ever seen in the upper world, and it excited 

 our optic nerves in a most confusing manner. We kept 

 thinking and calling it brilliant, and again and again I 

 picked up a book to read the type, only to find that I could 

 not tell the difference between a blank page and a colored 

 plate. I brought all my logic to bear, I put out of mind 

 the excitement of our position in watery space and tried 

 to think sanely of comparative color, and I failed utterly. 

 I flashed on the searchlight, which seemed the yellowest 

 thing I have ever seen, and let it soak into my eyes, yet 

 the moment it was switched off, it was like the long van- 

 ished sunlight — it was as though it never had been — and 

 the blueness of the blue, both outside and inside our sphere, 

 seemed to pass materially through the eye into our very 

 beings. This is all very unscientific; quite worthy of being 

 jeered at by optician or physicist, but there it was. I was 



