telephone, alas, was silent. I had, however, had the operations 

 thoroughly rehearsed in the port of Dakar: hadn't the crew had 

 enough training ? As I had no way of communicating with the surface, 

 it was impossible for me to intervene. If only I could have been two 

 men ; without losing my place in the cabin, have been present on the 

 deck of the Scaldis ! 



At last we heard the noise of the steam engine driving the winch. 

 We went down again. A fathom lower we came to a standstill. As the 

 float was not filled with petrol, it was too light and sank no deeper 

 in the water than to a third of its height. They seemed to be connecting 

 the hoses for the petrol and the carbon dioxide. The only thing that 

 we could hear was the murmur of our Draeger apparatus. But at last 

 a new noise was added: the murmur of the pump motor which was 

 sucking up the petrol in the fuel-bunkers of the Scaldis and sending it 

 down into the tanks of the bathyscaphe. Loaded thus, we went slowly 

 down. We watched the sea. In front of our portholes a swimmer passed. 

 Is it Nicolas, the friend of Captain Nemo? A picture illustrating 

 Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea has remained engraved on my 

 memory : half a century has not effaced it : Aronnax, Professor in the 

 Museum at Paris, and Captain Nemo in the semi-darkness of the 

 saloon of the Nautilus : outside, in full light, the diver. Today it is I 

 ^ho am in the submarine. At my side there is indeed a professor of a 

 Museum in Paris, but it is not Aronnax, it is Dr. Monod. We are not 

 in the Nautilus but in the FNRS 2. And we are in 1948. 



This cannot be, then, the pearl-fisher of Cape Matapan. But in spite 

 of all this, the analogy amused us. It was a diver from the Elie-Monnier. 

 He had in front of his eyes the big goggles divers wear, between his 

 lips the mouthpiece by which they breathe, and on his feet Corlieu 

 palms. He came close to our porthole : I lit up my face so that he could 

 see me. 



The whirring of the pump ceased : the float was full of petrol. 

 Now why didn't we go down } The daylight decreased. Have they 

 forgotten us on top there ? The tropical night falls rapidly. The lights 

 of the Scaldis lit up the sea around us. We plugged in our lamps. 



Once more a diver paid us a visit ; he found us playing chess. Why 

 not } We had nothing else to do, unfortunately. As neither Monod nor 

 I saw him, he attracted our attention by knocking several times on the 

 wall of the cabin. On a little board, which he held in front of the win- 

 dow, we read : * You are going down. Don't stay down there too long. 



[58] 



