During these first weeks I tried to make friends with Maracot, but it was not easy work. First of all, he is the most absorbed and absent-minded man in the world. You will remember how you smiled when he gave the elevator boy a penny under the impression that he was in a street car. Half the time he is utterly lost in his thoughts, and seems hardly aware of where he is or what he is doing. Then in the second place he is secretive to the last degree. He is continually working at papers and charts, which he shuffles away when I happen to enter the cabin. It is my firm belief that the man has some secret project in his mind, but that so long as we are due to touch at any port he will keep it to himself. That is the impression which I have received, and I find that Bill Scanlan is of the same opinion.
‘Say, Mr. Headley,’ said he one evening, when I was seated in the laboratory testing out the salinity of samples from our hydrographic soundings, ‘what d’you figure out that this guy has in his mind? What d’you reckon that he means to do?’
‘I suppose,’ said I, ‘that we shall do what the Challenger and a dozen other exploring ships have done before us, and add a few more species to the list of fish and a few more entries to the bathymetric chart.’
‘Not on your life,’ said he. ‘If that’s your opinion you’ve got to guess again. First of all, what am I here for, anyhow?’
‘In case the machinery goes wrong,’ I hazarded.
‘Machinery nothing! The ship’s machinery is in charge of MacLaren, the Scotch engineer. No, sir, it wasn’t to run a donkey-engine that the Merribank folk sent out their star performer. If I pull down fifty bucks a week it’s not for nix. Come here, and I’ll make you wise to it..’
He took a key from his pocket and opened a door at the back of the laboratory which led us down a companion ladder to a section of the hold which was cleared right across save for four large glittering objects half-exposed amid the straw of their huge packing-cases. They were flat sheets of steel with elaborate bolts and rivets along the edges. Each sheet was about ten feet square and an inch and a half thick, with a circular gap of eighteen inches in the middle.
‘What in thunder is it?’ I asked.
Bill Scanlan’s queer face — he looks half-way between a vaudeville comic and a prize-fighter — broke into a grin at my astonishment.
‘That’s my baby, sir,’ he quoted. ‘Yes, Mr. Headley, that’s what I am here for. There is a steel bottom to the thing. It’s in that big case yonder. Then there is a top, kind of arched, and a great ring for a chain or rope. Now, look here at the bottom of the ship.’
There was a square wooden platform there, with projecting screws at each corner which showed that it was detachable.
‘There is a double bottom,’ said Scanlan. ‘It may be that this guy is clean loco, or it may be that he has more in his block than we know, but if I read him right he means to build up a kind of room — the windows are in storage here — and lower it through the bottom of the ship. He’s got electric searchlights here, and I allow that he plans to shine ‘em through the round portholes and see what’s goin’ on around.’
‘He could have put a crystal sheet into the ship, like the Catalina Island boats, if that was all that was in his mind,’ said I.
‘You’ve said a mouthful,’ said Bill Scanlan, scratching his head. ‘I can’t figger it out nohow. The only one sure thing is, that I’ve been sent to be under his orders and to help him with the darn fool thing all I can. He has said nothin’ up to now, so I’ve said the same, but I’ll just snoop around, and if I wait long enough I’ll learn all there is to know.’
So that was how I first got on to the edge of our mystery. We ran into some dirty weather after that, and then we got to work doing some deep-sea trawling north-west of Cape Juba, just outside the Continental Slope, and taking temperature readings and salinity records. It’s a sporting proposition, this deep-sea dragging with a Peterson otter trawl gaping twenty feet wide for everything that comes its way — sometimes down a quarter of a mile and bringing up one lot of fish, sometimes half a mile and quite a different lot, every stratum of ocean with its own inhabitants as separate as so many continents. Sometimes from the bottom we would just bring up half a ton of clear pink jelly, the raw material of life, or, maybe, it would be a scoop of pteropod ooze, breaking up under the microscope into millions of tiny round reticulated balls with amorphous mud between. I won’t bore you with all the brotulids and macrurids, the ascidians and holothurians and polyzoa and echinoderms — anyhow, you can reckon that there is a great harvest in the sea, and that we have been diligent reapers. But always I had the same feeling that the heart of Maracot was not in the job, and that other plans were in that queer high, narrow Egyptian mummy of a head. It all seemed to me to be a try-out of men and things until the real business got going.
I had got as far as this in my letter when I went ashore to have a last stretch, for we sail in the early morning. It’s as well, perhaps, that I did go, for there was no end of a barney going on upon the pier, with Maracot and Bill Scanlan right in the heart of it. Bill is a bit of a scrapper, and has what he calls a mean wallop in both mitts, but with half a dozen Dagoes with knives all round them things looked ugly, and it was time that I butted in. It seems that the Doctor had hired one of the things they call cabs, and had driven half over the island inspecting the geology, but had clean forgotten that he had no money on him. When it came to paying, he could not make these country hicks understand, and the cabman had grabbed his watch so as to make sure. That brought Bill Scanlan into action, and they would have both been on the floor with their backs like pin-cushions if I had not squared the matter up, with a dollar or two over for the driver and a five-dollar bonus for the chap with the mouse under his eye. So all ended well, and Maracot was more human than ever I saw him yet. When we got to the ship he called me into the little cabin which he reserves for himself and he thanked me.
‘By the way, Mr. Headley,’ he said, ‘I understand that you are not a married man?’
‘No,’ said I, ‘I am not.’
‘No one depending upon you?’
‘No.’
‘Good!’ said he. ‘I have not spoken of the object of this voyage because I have, for my own reasons, desired it to be secret. One of those reasons was that I feared to be forestalled. When scientific plans get about one may be served as Scott was served by Amundsen. Had Scott kept his counsel as I have done, it would be he and not Amundsen who would have been the first at the South Pole. For my part, I have quite as important a destination as the South Pole, and so I have been silent. But now we are on the eve of our great adventure and no rival has time to steal my plans. Tomorrow we start for our real goal.’
‘And what is that?’ I asked.
He leaned forward, his ascetic face all lit up with the enthusiasm of the fanatic.
‘Our goal,’ said he, ‘is the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.’
And right here I ought to stop, for I expect it has taken away your breath as it did mine. If I were a story-writer, I guess I should leave it at that. But as I am just a chronicler of what occurred, I may tell you that I stayed another hour in the cabin of old man Maracot, and that I learned a lot, which there is still just time for me to tell you before the last shore boat leaves.
‘Yes, young man,’ said he, ‘you may write freely now, for by the time your letter reaches England we shall have made the plunge.’
This started him sniggering, for he has a queer dry sense of humour of his own.
‘Yes, sir, the plunge is the right word on this occasion, a plunge which will be historic in the annals of Science. Let me tell you, in the first place, that I am well convinced that the current doctrine as to the extreme pressure of the ocean at great depths is entirely misleading. It is perfectly clear that other factors exist which neutralise the effect, though I am not yet prepared to say what those factors may be. That is one of the problems which we may settle. Now, what pressure, may I ask, have you been led to expect under a mile of water?’ He glowered
at me through his big horn spectacles.
‘Not less than a ton to the square inch,’ I answered. ‘Surely that has been clearly shown.’
‘The task of the pioneer has always been to disprove the thing which has been clearly shown. Use your brains, young man. You have been for the last month fishing up some of the most delicate Bathic forms of life, creatures so delicate that you could hardly transfer them from the net to the tank without marring their sensitive shapes. Did you find that there was evidence upon them of this extreme pressure?’
‘The pressure,’ said I, ‘equalised itself. It was the same within as without.’
‘Words — mere words!’ he cried, shaking his lean head impatiently. ‘You have brought up round fish, such fish as Gastro-stomus globulus. Would they not have been squeezed flat had the pressure been as you imagine? Or look at our otter-boards. They are not squeezed together at the mouth of the trawl.’
‘But the experience of divers?’
‘Certainly it holds good up to a point. They do find a sufficient increase of pressure to influence what is perhaps the most sensitive organ of the body, the interior of the ear. But as I plan it, we shall not be exposed to any pressure at all. We shall be lowered in a steel cage with crystal windows on each side for observation. If the pressure is not strong enough to break in an inch and a half of toughened double-nickelled steel, then it cannot hurt us. It is an extension of the experiment of the Williamson Brothers at Nassau, with which no doubt you are familiar. If my calculation is wrong — well, you say that no one is dependent upon you. We shall die in a great adventure. Of course, if you would rather stand clear, I can go alone.’
It seemed to me the maddest kind of scheme, and yet you know how difficult it is to refuse a dare. I played for time while I thought it over.
‘How deep do you propose to go, sir?’ I asked.
He had a chart pinned upon the table, and he placed the end of his compasses upon a point which lies to the south-west of the Canaries.
‘Last year I did some sounding in this part,’ said he.
‘There is a pit of great depth. We got twenty-five thousand feet there. I was the first to report it. Indeed, I trust that you will find it on the charts of the future as the “Maracot Deep”.’
‘But, good God, sir!’ I cried, ‘you don’t propose to descend into an abyss like that?’
‘No, no,’ he answered, smiling. ‘Neither our lowering chain nor our air tubes reach beyond half a mile. But I was going to explain to you that round this deep crevasse, which has no doubt been formed by volcanic forces long ago, there is a varied ridge or narrow plateau, which is not more than three hundred fathoms under the surface.’
‘Three hundred fathoms! A third of a mile!’
‘Yes, roughly a third of a mile. It is my present intention that we shall be lowered in our little pressure-proof look-out station on to this submarine bank. There we shall make such observations as we can. A speaking-tube will connect us with the ship so that we can give our directions. There should be no difficulty in the mater. When we wish to be hauled up we have only to say so.’
‘And the air?’
‘Will be pumped down to us.’
‘But it will be pitch-dark.’
‘That, I fear, is undoubtedly true. The experiments of Fol and Sarasin at the Lake of Geneva show that even the ultra-violet rays are absent at that depth. But does it matter? We shall be provided with the powerful electric illumination from the ship’s engines, supplemented by six two-volt Hellesens dry cells connected together so as to give a current of twelve volts. That, with a Lucas army signalling lamp as a movable reflector, should serve our turn. Any other difficulties?’
‘If our air lines tangle?’
‘They won’t tangle. And as a reserve we have compressed air in tubes which would last us twenty — four hours. Well, have I satisfied you? Will you come?’
It was not an easy decision. The brain works quickly and imagination is a mighty vivid thing. I seemed to realise that black box down in the primeval depths, to feel the foul twice-breathed air, and then to see the walls sagging, bulging inwards, rending at the joints with the water spouting in at every rivet-hole and crevice and crawling up from below. It was a slow, dreadful death to die. But I looked up, and there were the old man’s fiery eyes fixed upon me with the exaltation of a martyr to Science. It’s catching, that sort of enthusiasm, and if it be crazy, it is at least noble and unselfish. I caught fire from his great flame, and I sprang to my feet with my hand out.
‘Doctor, I’m with you to the end,’ said I.
‘I knew it,’ said he. ‘It was not for your smattering of learning that I picked you, my young friend, nor,’ he added, smiling, ‘for your intimate acquaintance with the pelagic crabs. There are other qualities which may be more immediately useful, and they are loyalty and courage.’
So with that little bit of sugar I was dismissed, with my future pledged and my whole scheme of life in ruins. Well, the last shore boat is leaving. They are calling for the mail. You will either not hear from me again, my dear Talbot, or you will get a letter worth reading. If you don’t hear you can have a floating headstone and drop it somewhere south of the Canaries with the inscription :
‘Here, or Hereabouts, lies all that the fishes have left of my friend, CYRUS J. HEADLEY.’
The second document in the case is the unintelligible wireless message which was intercepted by several vessels, including the Royal Mail steamer Arroya. It was received at 3 p.m. October 3rd, 1926, which shows that it was dispatched only two days after the Stratford left the Grand Canary, as shown in the previous letter, and it corresponds roughly with the time when the Norwegian barque saw a steamer founder in a cyclone two hundred miles to the south-west of Porta de la Luz. It ran thus :
Blown on our beam ends. Fear position hopeless. Have already lost Maracot, Headley, Scanlan. Situation incomprehensible. Headley handkerchief end of deep sea sounding wire. God help us! S. S. Stratford.
This was the last, incoherent message which came from the ill-fated vessel, and part of it was so strange that it was put down to delirium on the part of the operator. It seemed, however, to leave no doubt as to the fate of the ship.
The explanation — if it can be accepted as an explanation — of the matter is to be found in the narrative concealed inside the vitreous ball, and first it would be as well to amplify the very brief account which has hitherto appeared in the Press of the finding of the ball. I take it verbatim from the log of the Arabella Knowles, master Amos Green, outward bound with coals from Cardiff to Buenos Aires :
‘Wednesday, Jan. 5th, 1927. Lat. 27.14, Long. 28 West. Calm weather. Blue sky with low banks of cirrus clouds. Sea like glass. At two bells of the middle watch the first officer reported that he had seen a shining object bound high out of the sea, and then fall back into it. His first impression was that it was some strange fish, but on examination with his glasses he observed that it was a silvery globe, or ball, which was so light that it lay, rather than floated, on the surface of the water. I was called and saw it, as large as a football, gleaming brightly about half a mile off on our starboard beam. I stopped the engines and called away the quarter-boat under the second mate, who picked the thing up and brought it aboard.
‘On examination it proved to be a ball made of some sort of very tough glass, and filled with a substance so light that when it was tossed in the air it wavered about like a child’s balloon. It was nearly transparent, and we could see what looked like a roll of paper inside it. The material was so tough, however, that we had the greatest possible difficulty in breaking the ball open and getting at the contents. A hammer would not crack it, and it was only when the chief engineer nipped it in the throw of the engine that we were able to smash it. Then I am sorry to say that it dissolved into sparkling dust, so that it was impossible to collect any good-sized piece for examination. We got the paper, however, and, having examined it and concluded that it was of great importance, we laid it aside w
ith the intention of handing it over to the British Consul when we reached the Plate River. Man and boy, I have been at sea for five-and-thirty years, but this is the strangest thing that ever befell me, and so says every man aboard this ship. I leave the meaning of it all to wiser heads than mine.’
So much for the genesis of the narrative of Cyrus J. Headley, which we will now give exactly as written :
Whom am I writing to? Well, I suppose I may say to the whole wide world, but as that is rather a vague address I’ll aim at my friend Sir James Talbot, of Oxford University, for the reason that my last letter was to him and this may be regarded as a continuation. I expect the odds are a hundred to one that this ball, even if it should see the light of day and not be gulped by a shark in passing, will toss about on the waves and never catch the eye of the passing sailor, and yet it’s worth trying, and Maracot is sending up another, so, between us, it may be that we shall get our wonderful story to the world. Whether the world will believe it is another matter, I guess, but when folk look at the ball with its vitrine cover and note its contents of levigen gas, they will surely see for themselves that there is something here that is out of the ordinary. You at any rate, Talbot, will not throw it aside unread.
If anyone wants to know how the thing began, and what we were trying to do, he can find it all in a letter I wrote you on October 1st last year, the night before we left Porta de la Luz. By George! If I had known what was in store for us, I think I should have sneaked into a shore boat that night. And yet — well, maybe, even with my eyes open I would have stood by the Doctor and seen it through. On second thoughts I have not a doubt that I would.
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 620
