connected by a cable 297 ft. long with a rubber boat on the surface, 

 and gave the necessary instructions. 



In the cabin reception was so good that I could hear Engineer 

 Salvio not only speaking into his telephone, but also retransmitting the 

 orders : 



* The door is closed, begin to fill the shaft.' 



The hydrant of the Tenace went into action : water poured into the 

 lock, and soon the window was submerged. At the end of a few minutes 

 the people on the surface told us : 



* Shaft full.' 



On deck they closed the upper hatchway : ' Open the valves of the 

 two air tanks.' 



The air escaped, replaced by 400 cu. ft. of water. 



*You are going down. The deck is almost entirely submerged. 

 * "Wait, you've stopped going down.' 



The bathyscaphe was still too light. Jacques spoke on the telephone 

 again : 



*Pump air into the two tanks. Bring twenty bags of ballast.' 



Up we went again. 



'Twenty sacks are aboard.' 



'Expel the air again. Open the sluices a half-turn. Another quarter- 

 turn.' 



'You are going down. The deck is submerged. The tower is half 

 under. It has disappeared. Now, the flagpole.' 



This time the Trieste dived and the light from outside decreased in a 

 very marked way. In a few minutes we should touch bottom. 



We looked out of the porthole, but we could see nothing. And 

 then we caught sight of the bottom, very indistinct, perhaps 8 fathoms 

 away ; but we had stopped moving. The explanation was simple : in 

 this fine, calm weather the Italian sun had considerably heated the 

 upper layer of the water, which became lighter. Now the Trieste was 

 floating on a colder, and hence heavier, layer. We had begun the dive 

 with an insufficient overall weight and the bathyscaphe was not heavy 

 enough to penetrate the layer of cold water which increased the 

 buoyancy of the petrol. Through the porthole we saw our friend, 

 Engineer de Sanctis, who had dived down to pay us a visit. When 

 we came up he told us that, in fact, at the depth where we stopped, he 

 had run into a layer of icy water ; the cold had forced him to go up 

 again. 



[ 109 ] 



