A DESCENT INTO PERPETUAL NIGHT 20I 



sorbed. The last hint of blue tapers into a nameless gray, 

 and this finally into black, but from the present level 

 down, the eye falters, and the mind refuses any articulate 

 color distinction. The sun is defeated and color has gone 

 forever, until a human at last penetrates and flashes a yel- 

 low electric ray into what has been jet black for two bil- 

 lion years. 



I kept the light on for a while and at 1050 feet through 

 a school of little flying snails there suddenly passed a "large 

 dark body, over four feet long" (so I telephoned it). I 

 shut off the light, but looked into empty gray space with- 

 out a trace of lumination — the fish had dissolved. Later, 

 with the light on again, ten feet lower, a pilotfish ap- 

 peared, showing how easily his kind can adapt itself to a 

 shift of more than 30 atmospheres and from 15 pounds an 

 inch at the surface to 480 at this level. 



Lights now brightened and increased, and at iioo feet 

 I saw more fish and other organisms than my prebathy- 

 sphere experience had led me to hope to see on the entire 

 dive. With the light on, several chunky little hatchet-fish 

 approached and passed through; then a silver-eyed larval 

 fish two inches long; a jelly; suddenly a vision to which 

 I can give no name, although I saw others subsequently. 

 It was a network of luminosity, delicate, with large meshes, 

 all aglow and in motion, waving slowly as it drifted. Next 

 a dim, very deeply built fish appeared and vanished; then 

 a four-inch larval eel swimming obliquely upward; and 

 so on. This ceaseless telephoning left me breathless and I 



