Don't start anything working.' At last some news! But why did he say 

 'don't stay down too long'? No doubt he meant not longer than is 

 usual during bathyscaphe dives, but as our descent was the first ever 

 done in a bathyscaphe, the order lacked clarity to some extent. And 

 why weren't we to start up the motor .'^ When we came up, no one 

 could give us an explanation. It was a disappointment for me not to 

 see our propellers function. We concluded from the message that 

 they were in the process of putting the ballast aboard. Suddenly Monod 

 cried: 'We're at the bottom.' Without a jolt, without a jar, the 

 FNRS 2 had grounded at 14 fathoms: the projectors of the Scaldis 

 illuminated a vast area. 



As the echo sounder and the frogman had led us to expect, the 

 bottom was flat. But if we had hoped to find anemones, corals or pearl 

 oysters here we should have been disappointed: the sea was empty. 

 Everywhere there was a grey sediment, ridged like a ploughed field, 

 where the surge had rolled it into furrows. Here and there, there were 

 a few dark patches, which Dr. Monod could not explain. A luminous 

 fish passed. Dr. Monod told me that it was not the fish which was 

 phosphorescent, but the algae with which it was covered. 



We started the apparatus to measure the cosmic rays, and the meter 

 crackled loudly. Without even checking the recorder, we could hear 

 that it was slower than on the surface. Fourteen fathoms of water, 

 then, absorb an appreciable part of cosmic radiation. At the end of a 

 quarter of an hour, having nothing to do since we were not to move 

 about, we decided that the limit between * not long enough ' and * too 

 long' had been reached, so we set about throwing the ballast over- 

 board. Twelve large tubs of iron scrap were held to the float by 

 electro-magnets : I had my hand on a switch ; all I had to do was press 

 with one finger for one of the electro-magnets to let go. In short, it's 

 as simple as a modern lift. In fact, after a light pressure on the button, 

 I could see through the porthole that one of the ballast tubs had 

 loosened itself and fallen. I repeated this operation several times : and 

 the ground moved away from us. At ten o'clock at night we came once 

 more to the surface. 



Hours passed, interminably. We heard the pump functioning and, 

 at last, the winch going into action. My porthole came out of the water : 

 we were rising. I could see the Scaldis ^ with the whole crew at the rails : 

 I recognized my son, who is a head taller than the others : he would 

 very much have liked to come with me. If one could have told him 



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