CONTOUR DIVING I 39 



the first two dives were probably the most fool-hardy 

 things we could have done, for the sphere drifted back- 

 ward, and from my window I could see only the bottom 

 over which we had passed. If our projecting wooden land- 

 ing gear had caught in a sudden rise of reef it would have 

 gone very hard with us. As it was, I could only flatten my 

 eyes against the quartz and try to adapt my elevation 

 orders to what the contour promised. Once a crag passed 

 two feet beneath us and I had a most unpleasant moment 

 while we were rushed up 30 feet. 



Early on the following day, June twentieth, Barton 

 ajfixed a double wooden rudder of boards to orient the 

 sphere, so that in our subsequent contour dives we swung 

 around and faced forward. Another improvement was 

 the shifting of the shackle to the posterior hole, so that 

 the whole apparatus tilted slightly downwards in front. 

 I had the lead heaved constantly and telephoned to me, 

 and so rapidly were my orders transmitted* to the man 

 at the winch that we rose and fell swiftly as we progressed 

 slowly seaward, now ordering a fathom or two of eleva- 

 tion to escape a projecting coral crag, then dropping down 

 into a submarine valley until the bottom again became 

 visible. In spite of a constant watch ahead, accidents were 

 on several occasions barely avoided. 



Two years later, in 1932, when we were diving from the 

 deck of a large tug, one of the contour dives was marked 

 by the narrowest escape which we ever experienced. We 

 had already hurdled two low coral reefs, twenty and thirty 



