A DESCENT INTO PERPETUAL NIGHT 21 3 



I had been given such excellent sights. I added all the de- 

 tails that came to mind. Then, with my artist Mrs. Bostel- 

 mann, I went into an artistic huddle, made scrawling at- 

 tempts myself, and then carefully corrected her trained 

 drawing. Little by little my brain fish materialized, its pro- 

 portions, size, color, lights, fins interdigitated with those 

 of my memory, and we have a splendid finished painting 

 (Fig. 118), which represents the vision in front of my 

 window at 1 1 152 in the morning of August eleventh, 1900 

 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. 



In the never-ceasing excitement of abounding life I 

 had completely forgotten the idea of a half-mile record, 

 and when on deck, in exactly another hour, we were re- 

 minded that an additional 130 feet would have done the 

 trick, I had no regrets. A man-made unit of measure is 

 of far less importance than my Three-starred Angler which 

 otherwise we should surely have missed. 



As for this particular dive, we started up from the 

 lowest depth, 2510 feet, with 650 pounds of oxygen left 

 in the tank and reached the surface just as the last hiss 

 of gas escaped from the valve, and the recording ball set- 

 tled to rest. Unfortunately for any sensational news value, 

 we had a second valve and full tank ready to use. We had 

 been sealed up for more than three hours and when we 

 stepped out the air was as fresh as that on deck, the pres- 

 sure was exceedingly slight and while we were both glad of 

 the relaxing of constant tenseness, and our legs and feet 

 were sound asleep, our mechanical apparatus had worked 



