THE PACIFIC 207 



surprisingly survived the blast of the atomic bomb, they looked 

 down upon the dwarf city which had sprung up over the whole 

 area so recently laid waste. At the supposed centre of the devas- 

 tated area, a few small stalls existed for the sale of photographs 

 of the scenes of horror and the human wreckage which the bomb 

 had left behind. There were also more material relics on sale, 

 such as bricks and roof tiles, which showed signs of scorching 

 from the heat of the blast. Tom was surprised when the Captain 

 declined to buy one of these to add to his souvenirs, while he 

 himself bought two tiles, the glazing of which was blackened and 

 had air bubbles beneath its surface. At sea again, Tom came to 

 the cuddy with a tile saying that he still thought the Captain 

 should have one and he had bought this one for him; he knew 

 that the Captain would regret for ever having failed to get one in 

 Hiroshima. This tile survived the bufPetings of the remainder of 

 the voyage in the Captain's cabin, but although it had come 

 intact through the holocaust, it was fractured into a dozen pieces 

 with ease by his three-year-old son a few days after it had been 

 set upon a shelf at home. 



From Japan the ship sailed southwards into the warmer 

 weather, encountering upon her way a most rugged sea-bed topo- 

 graphy, with mountain ranges interspersed with extensive plains. 

 The sounding and the seismic work went forward steadily with 

 the better weather. Hour after hour the deep sounder was 

 running, the 'ping' of the outgoing signal ringing and reverberating 

 from the loudspeaker on the bridge. There were few places on 

 deck where this could not be heard and the metallic and regular 

 sound formed a background to every shipboard activity. The echo 

 returning from the greater depths had to be listened for by the 

 Officer on Watch, for such a signal was often too weak to record 

 a mark upon the echo sounding paper. It was absorbing to listen 

 for the little click which represented the return of the robust 

 signal sent to the depths, and to note how its time taken to 

 return lengthened or became shorter as the valleys and mountains 

 of the ocean floor fell away or rose up beneath the ship as she 

 steamed southward towards the Equator. 



A brief pause at Manus off the coast of New Guinea was made 

 to take in fuel from the Royal Australian Naval Base; then 



