function? The answers to these questions would have to wait until 

 we could open the cabin and read the recording pressure gauge. 



Meanwhile the frogmen of the Elie-Monnier examined the cabin. 

 What they told us was not very reassuring. Drops of water could be 

 seen inside one of the portholes, which proved that a joint was not 

 tight. It is true that a few drops would have been enough to dampen 

 a porthole, and I refused to give up all hope. 



The submarine was brought alongside. Meanwhile the wind rose; 

 night came on suddenly, as it does in the tropics. After dark, operations 

 were more difficult. We connected the hose without difficulty which 

 should conduct the carbon dioxide into the float, but we could not 

 manage to join up the big tube which would bring back the petrol to 

 the Scaldis. The sea was too rough and the hose too heavy: all our 

 efforts were in vain. The waves swept the deck of the bathyscaphe and 

 the two men working on it stood in great danger of being washed 

 overboard. A shark turned slowly around the submarine. Although 

 sharks rarely attack man, so they say, this made us anxious, for fear, 

 perhaps, that at night they might be less pacifie. At this moment I 

 learnt that one of the men could barely swim. That made up my mind, 

 and we took them back on board. 



Since there was no possibility of raising the bathyscaphe with its 

 petrol in it, we decided to tow it to shelter inside the Bay of Santa- 

 Clara. But we could only go very slowly: the FNRS 2 was not 

 intended for this sort of transport : the waves beat on its sides : the 

 metal plates creaked under their blows. Also, I had the impression 

 that the float was slowly going down : if that was the case, it meant there 

 was a leak in one of the reservoirs, and the water, entering by one of 

 the lower orifices, was driving out the petrol and taking its place : at 

 night and in such weather it was difficult to tell. In fact this was a 

 mistake, but I was not to know it till later. If the bathyscaphe got any 

 heavier it would end by sinking. We therefore had to take a quick 

 decision: the petrol had to be replaced not by water but by carbon 

 dioxide. We had to force this gas into the reservoir by means of the 

 narrow tube, but since the big hose could not be connected, we had 

 to sacrifice the petrol and let it run out into the sea. That would put 

 an end to our diving and to the whole expedition, but we reckoned it 

 better to sacrifice the petrol than to risk the loss of the bathyscaphe 

 itself. 



6600 gallons of petrol in the open sea caused a considerable danger 



[63] 



