Chapter 10 



THE BATHYSPHERE BROADCAST 



I HAVE already said that in 1932, the moment we took 

 the bathysphere from her winter quarters and 

 groomed her for the new dive, it seemed to awaken 

 all the powers of the cosmos to activity. The next day there 

 came an almost total eclipse of the sun. Then followed a 

 lurid, wicked evening when one of the largest meteors any 

 of us had ever seen rushed across the sky, leaving a glow- 

 ing line, and then burst in a blaze which lightened the 

 entire land- and seascape. The same evening presaged a 

 hurricane which grew and grew — a terrible blast of hot 

 air, bending great cedars like reeds, and making the strong- 

 est roofs tremble. The second night a sickly gibbous moon 

 shone through ragged, hurtling clouds, and once showed a 

 mighty water-spout twisting along, far out at sea. Word 

 came, just before the telephone wires went down, that the 

 Freedom, with the bathysphere, had been jammed into the 

 heart of three great hulks, under the lee of a high cliff. 



Then came the driving rain in solid sheets, and almost 

 continuous lightning. And at last a morning, with all the 

 plants and leaves in the world tired and shredded, but the 

 air clear as crystal, fresh, and glowing with full, gorgeous 



sunlight. 



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