on the barograph. Was this the moment to unballast? Once again, if 

 the object of our dive had been to observe the fauna, we should not have 

 hesitated to do it: motionless in the water, the conditions would be 

 ideal for observation. The fish would certainly not be suspicious of an 

 inert body : we should take them off guard with the Hght of our pro- 

 jector, and be able to photograph them. But today we wanted to prove 

 above all that our bathyscaphe was a veritable abyssal submarine. What 

 was more, we hadn't a minute to lose : if the meteorologist gave us 

 a reliable forecast, in a few hours conditions on the surface would have 

 become worse. In that absolute calm it was difficult to imagine a wave, 

 but we did not forget the violence of those which had almost pre- 

 vented us, a few moments before, from reaching the deck of the 

 Trieste. 



The red bulb blinked on; the barograph continued to trace its 

 curved line. 748 fathoms, the depth reached by Barton in 1948 in his 

 bathysphere. 759 fathoms, the depth reached by the FNRS j in the 

 same year during its dive without crew off the Cape Verde Islands. 



When Sven Hedin, exploring Tibet, wanted to continue his journey 

 to Lhasa the natives tried to forbid him the road : the prohibition was 

 strict : no foreigner was admitted to the holy city. Sven Hedin was not 

 impressed by this and replied : ' Our law at home forbids us to retrace 

 our steps before we have reached our end, therefore we must carry 

 on.' And the Tibetans, overcome with wonder, gave way. 



We too went on our way : time passed rapidly. Sometimes I watched 

 at the porthole while my son watched the instruments, sometimes 

 we changed places. The containers of soda-lime belonging to the 

 apparatus renewing the air, by means of which we could breathe, 

 become warmer in the natural course as they absorb the carbon dioxide. 

 The heat reaches the opening first, then the centre, then the end of the 

 container, while the other end has already become cold again, saturated 

 with carbonic gas. Soon we should have to change them. We had an 

 ample reserve at our disposal in our 'cellar', in the bunker fitted out 

 under the flooring. 



1 1 50 fathoms! It was from this depth that, on the 14th August 

 1953, the FNRS j, manned by Captain Houot and Engineer Willm, 

 came back without having seen the bottom. 



At this moment we still had more than 550 fathoms of water 

 beneath us. I suddenly remembered the device of Santos-Dumont : 

 * Through seas never yet furrowed ' (Por mares nunca d' antes navegados). 



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