into the cabin and closed the door. The orders were transmitted by 

 telephone : ' Fill the lock. Close the hatch. Take out the pins.' 



'Pins out.' 



' Did you yourself see that they were taken out } ' (An error could 

 prove fatal.) 



T saw it with my own eyes.' 



' Open the sluices in the air tanks.' 



We heard the boatswain retransmitting the order : the water rushed 

 into the tanks and weighed down the bathyscaphe. 



Then the message came through from the surface : 



'You are going down . . . the deck is under water. The tower is 

 half-under . . . we are disconnecting the telephone cable.' 



A sharp noise told us that from now on we were isolated and left 

 to ourselves. The descent began. 



Suddenly we noticed that the iron pellets were running out from 

 the front tank : we Connected the ammeter on the solenoid circuit, or, 

 more correctly, the millivolt-meter on the shunt of the circuit cor- 

 responding to it : the index remained at zero, a proof that the circuit 

 was cut. A few minutes later we were on the surface again. Between 

 two and three tons of iron pellets had escaped. 



The film which was taken underwater during the preparation 

 showed me later the probable reason of the breakdown: the cable 

 supplying the solenoid must be relatively weak at a certain point so 

 that it can break, if circumstances force us to sacrifice an entire tank of 

 ballast : at the critical moment, a diver came near the solenoid : in- 

 advertently he must have pulled on the cable with his breathing 

 apparatus and broken it at its weak point. 



What was to be done? To repair the cable underwater was quite 

 impossible. Were we to go back to Castellammare, empty the petrol 

 tanks, hoist the bathyscaphe on to the dock, and then, after repairs, 

 start all over again ? It would have taken a week at least, and we could 

 not spare the time, as the season was already well advanced. Leaving 

 the Trieste, we went aboard the Tenace to study the situation. It was a 

 difficult situation. Suddenly my son had an idea. 



' Supposing we seal the opening of the faulty tank } We could then 

 replace the tons of ballast which have been lost by the emergency 

 ballast that we have on the Tenace. So we could go down again this 

 afternoon.' 



At first sight, to go down with a single tank working seemed like 



[ "5] 



