of the seat.
Through the closing of the door the sphere had suddenly become quiet and the ocean appeared alien and uncanny in its silence. Since I did not want to bother Margaret right at the start with my fearful fantasies, I kept silent and pulled out my writing utensils and my notebook and arranged them on the small shelf.
“Now we can give the signal,” I said and turned to Margaret. She nodded decisively and muttered to my surprise:
“I’m damned curious, what awaits us down there, but I don’t like the ocean today.”
This time I didn’t say anything. I gave the signal to submerge.
Shortly thereafter one could hear a soft humming and the heavy diving sphere was lifted by the strong cable-winches and a small swing out to the right. Now we must be right over the ocean surface. One more jolt and we slowly sank into the water. As we entered the water, for a few seconds we were swung about in the waves which foamed on the viewing window. We were then surrounded by a magical blue-green light, and as we sank deeper we could see the surface of the water from below like wavering silver.
Directly in front of us one could only see a blue-green expanse without any distinct objects. I leaned forward somewhat and looked diagonally below. The general blue-green shaded into a darker area and as we sank slowly deeper, out of the general forms of these blue hued areas emerged the contours of an undersea landscape.
I had a look on the depth measuring instrument. We had submerged to about 25 m. I could now see below us the lightly hilly surface which descended to a valley on the left whose floor I could not see. Further back the valley seemed to be defined by a steep coral riff.
Professor Pickering had really found a good place for the diving expedition.
Margaret and I had overcome our initial queasiness and were now gripped by the magic of the blue-violet light that surrounded us.
The surface below us had to be a paradisical place of life for every possible ocean plant and animal and we looked out with excitement upon the approaching ocean landscape. Within the visibility of 100 m the surface showed itself in more and more detail. We could see overgrown rock formations which appeared to have all sorts of forms on our right side. This area seemed to me especially interesting and so I gave the signal to stop, to halt the descent, and to swing us slowly to the right.
Up to then Margaret and I had not spoken a word. I pointed to the rocky landscape:
“We are still in the photoic zone above the 100 m. Perhaps we can be swung over there into that area. Then we could sink between the rock formations and have a much closer look to the diverse sea-life there.”
She nodded silently.
In the meantime the swing manœuvre was completed und the diving sphere stood still once more. Directly below us was a depression between two rock formations. We looked carefully into the depths. Now the diving sphere stood still and we could see an incredible diversity of swarming fish or schools of fish through the viewing window as they swam by and as if obeying some silent command they changed suddenly their direction in a perfect unity. And then again they continued their beautiful gliding dance.
Through the sideways motion we were now on the edge of the seaweed forest whose leaves grew 70 m up into the sunlight. These seaweed plants were attached to the rocks with root-like plates on which leaves grew which were carried by gas bubbles.
I was intending to make a few drawings of this underwater forest. As I reached for my note-book, my view fell on the water below us, and there I saw a long blue-black shadow gliding out on its way in the seaweed thicket. Margaret had seen the movement as well and gripped my arm.
“What is it?”
We both tried in the half light to see what sort of being it was that had appeared. Finally I saw a form of a four meter long tiger-shark.
A chill ran down my spine for I had heard enough stories about this wolf of the seas and even written one for myself.
“It is a tiger-shark,” I answered Margaret.
At the same moment the shark turned as if it had heard me diagonally above and swam directly to our viewing window.
Margaret screamed as she saw the demonic looking animal approach.
The tiger shark glid over our diving sphere and we were able to have a close look at the horrid killing rows of teeth directly in front of the window.
The shark crossed the window two more times, we had quite a long time a look into the uncannily lively and death promising eyes and then the animal disappeared in the blue-violet darkness of the seaweed.
My hands trembled and Margaret was still holding tightly to my arm. Now she let me go and laughed:
“We are certainly scaredy-cats. But I think we ought to continue a bit further to investigate and not turn tail and return at once to the Mayflower.”
I agreed with her. I too had no intention to make a bad appearance in front of our certainly more fearful predecessors, and so I boldly gave the signal, that the diving sphere should continue its descent.
Between the seaweed we could see the rock-formations upon which ocean animals were perched quite like plants, which I have written about so much. I took a special note of a collection of sea-anemones which looked like a large dahlia-blossom – but in reality are meat-eating animals.
Till now we had not switched on the external light so that all forms appeared in blue and blue-violet colors. Now I turned on the magnesium-light as I wished to make visible for Margaret and of course also for myself the magnificence of color of the undersea life.
We were astonished! The sea-anemones showed their glowing red and not far from them was a colony of sea-sheaths in blue-white colors with red markings. A number of sea urchins glowed in their green and others in their purple costumes.
In the meantime we had reached about 100 m and I gave the signal to stop. We wanted to have the time to observe longer all those colors and forms and swimming by fish and I began enthusiastically to draw and take notes. Margaret gave me helpful hints, as she had quite a discerning eye and could often take note of the quickly disappearing fish that swam by.
We must have spent about half an hour in that fashion before a surprising signal was sent by the Mayflower II to the diving sphere. In conjunction with my work as a writer I had learned Morse code so that our communications were not limited to simple signals.
“What’s going on?” Margaret asked and I deciphered the clattering Morse signals that were coming through the command line.
“We’re having problems with the winches and cannot, at this moment, raise the diving sphere.”
Suddenly we were prisoners of the sea!
I signalled back and asked how long the repairs would take.
“Two hours,” we were told.
We weren’t exactly put at ease but we nevertheless had the impression that we were not in imminent danger.
“Continue your sketches,” said Margaret. “It’s calming and more productive than brooding.”
She
