154 RENAISSANCE 



another. This warned me of what I should have sensed 

 when I looked through the window, that the contents of 

 the bathysphere were under terrific pressure. I cleared the 

 deck in front of the door of everyone, staff and crew. 

 One motion picture camera was placed on the upper deck 

 and a second close to, but well to one side of the bathy- 

 sphere. Carefully, little by little, two of us turned the brass 

 handles, soaked with the spray and I listened as the high 

 musical tone of impatient, confined elements gradually 

 descended the scale, a quarter tone or less at each slight 

 turn. Realizing what might happen, we leaned back as far 

 as possible from the line of fire. 



Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the bolt was 

 torn from our hands, and the mass of heavy metal shot 

 across the deck like a shell from a gun. The trajectory was 

 almost straight, and the brass bolt hurtled into the steel 

 winch thirty feet away across the deck and sheared a half- 

 inch notch gouged out by the harder metal. This was fol- 

 lowed by a solid cylinder of water, which slackened after 

 a while to a cataract, pouring out of the hole in the door, 

 some air mingled with the water, looking like hot steam, 

 instead of compressed air shooting through ice-cold water. 

 If I had been in the way I would have been decapitated. 



All my life I had read of the terrific pressure at great 

 depths and had seen bottles and cans come up crushed, but 

 never until now had I had first-hand visual proof of this 

 phenomenon. We tested the temperature of the water and 

 found it fifty-six degrees, which showed that the primary 



