148 RENAISSANCE 



the Freedom I watched the steam escaping from the ship's 

 winch and saw in my mind a complete cycle — the bathy- 

 sphere tempered and hardened in fresh water; its terrific 

 inertia overcome, and the steel ball carried through space 

 by a confined, tenuous cloud of the same water, and finally 

 its ultimate destiny to descend into the deeps of ocean 

 water. Here were all the olden, so-called elements, fire, 

 water, earth, and air working together to carry living 

 beings to places where otherwise they could not remain 

 alive for a fraction of a second. 



Like Piccard's marvelous ascent into the stratosphere, 

 these descents of mine beneath the sea seemed to partake 

 of a real cosmic character. First of all there was the com- 

 plete and utter loneliness and isolation, a feeling wholly 

 unlike the isolation felt when removed from fellow men 

 by mere distance. Here was the necessity of an armor of 

 steel of great strength which could not be safely shed until 

 it was brought again into the atmosphere which men 

 breathe, and to the pressure to which our frail bodies are 

 used. It was a loneliness more akin to a first venture upon 

 the moon or Venus than that from a plane in mid-ocean 

 or a stance on Mount Everest: no whit more wonderful 

 than these feats, but different. 



And so, after I had seen the bathysphere safely on board 

 the Freedom and had returned to my headquarters at the 

 Bermuda Biological Station, it seemed appropriate and 

 natural that an eclipse of the sun should begin — a cosmic 

 event which dwarfed my puny human efforts into noth- 



