A curious thing about the phosphorescent fish was that they left trails of phosphorescence behind them, like the tails of meteors.
A fairly large fish was sprinkled all over with lights.
‘They call it the star-eater,’ Hal said. Even its fins were illuminated. From its chin dangled brilliantly lighted whiskers.
‘But there’s one without any lights,’ Roger said. ‘Why is that?’
‘It’s called the blindfish,’ Hal said. ‘It’s perfectly blind, so it couldn’t use lights to see where it is going. It just moves along slowly like a blind man walking down the street tapping his cane ahead of him. Only in this case there are about twenty canes - those long feelers that spread out in every direction. With these the fish can feel its way along and find its food.’
‘How deep are we now?’ Roger asked.
Hal looked at the illuminated depth gauge. “Eighteen hundred fathoms. Let’s see - a fathom is six feet. So we’re down about two miles.’
That’s as far as the geologists went,’ Roger said. ‘Do we go up now?’
“Not a chance,’ Hal said. They had good reason for going up - they had seen all they wanted to. But we haven’t begun to see what we came here to see. We want to find out what there is at the bottom - monsters, or no life at all?’
‘Didn’t Piccard and his pal find out?’
They thought they saw a flatfish and some shrimp. Other scientists say they must have been mistaken - that no fish could stand the terrific pressure. Perhaps we’ll find out who was right’
‘But we’ll be the first to go down that far in Deepboat,’ Roger said. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’
‘Of course I am,’ Hal admitted. ‘But someone has to test out this thing and we may as well be the ones. Until it begins to buckle in on us we’ll keep going down.’
Deepboat bumped hard and stopped.
‘We must be at the bottom already,’ said Roger. ‘Or else we struck a big fish.’
‘No,’ Hal said. ‘We bumped into a thermocline.’
‘What’s a thermocline?’
‘Look out of the window,’ said Hal. ‘See what looks like a floor?’
The thousands of small illuminated sea creatures lying on it did make it look like a floor. That’s a thermocline,’ Hal said. The ocean isn’t the same all the way down. It comes in layers like a layer cake. The top layer is warm water. The thermocline divides the warm water above from the colder water below. You noticed how we bounced up when we hit it. It’s a sort of heavy elastic sheet like the one a circus performer bounces on when he falls from a trapeze.’
‘Can we get through it?’
‘Sure.’ Hal turned on a little more power. Deepboat struck the thermocline again, broke through, and continued down.
Twice more they struck thermoclines, bounced up a few yards, put on more power and got through.
Suddenly everything in the sea began to rush upwards at a great rate. Hal turned on the searchlight. The canyon wall beside them was flying up at great speed.
‘What’s going on now?’ Roger worried. ‘I didn’t know so many things could happen on a deep dive.’
Hal looked at the tachometer. It measured their diving rate. ‘We’re going down twice as fast as we should. We’ve been caught in a current going down this cliff. It’s a sort of river in the ocean - but a strange river because it goes straight down rather than on the level.’ He turned off the engine. ‘We don’t need any power now,’ he said. ‘We get a free ride.’
The free ride did not last long. The swift drop ended in a sickening crash. There was no bounce this time. They had really struck something hard. Deepboat stopped dead.
‘I hope that didn’t crack open a seam somewhere,’ said Hal, inspecting the inside wall of their little prison. ‘I don’t see any water coming in.’
‘What happened?’
‘Struck a ledge sticking out from the cliff. If we can’t get off it, our trip ends right here. I’ll try going up a little.’
Deepboat did not budge. The force of the torrent coming from above held it firmly to the ledge.
This was a pretty pass. They couldn’t go either up or down.
‘We’ll try going sideways,’ Hal said. He diverted the power to the side jets. The boat began to roll towards the edge. The boys found themselves upside down. With a great deal of scraping and grinding, Deepboat reached the edge and dropped off. It righted itself, much to the relief of its passengers, and then continued its swift descent.
This went on for another thousand feet. Then the torrent mysteriously faded away like a river in the desert sinking into the sand.
No sooner had the trippers to the bottom of the world begun to breathe easily than their craft struck again. But this strike was quite different. It was not a hard jolt, but soft and squashy.
‘Another thermocline?’ said Roger.
‘Perhaps.’ Hal said. He put on more power. If this were another thermocline he could break through it. But Deepboat did not move.
‘Perhaps we’ve reached the bottom,’ Roger said.
Hal looked at the depth gauge. ‘Nowhere near it yet,’ he answered.
‘Then what can be holding us up?’
‘I don’t know,’ Hal confessed.
‘Look!’ cried Roger. Something had come up where the searchlight could shine upon it. What looked like two enormous eyes were visible through the window.
‘They can’t be eyes,’ Hal said. ‘Nothing has eyes as big as those. They look as big as a ship’s portholes.’
The great eyes looked like pools of angry green, lit from the inside.
‘Perhaps it’s a giant octopus,’ Roger guessed.
‘No,’ Hal said. ‘Even the biggest octopus has small eyes. And they don’t glow like these. These seem to be phosphorescent.’
Something like a huge snake passed across the win-Hal exclaimed, ‘Now I know what it is. The cousin of the giant octopus. The supergiant squid. It’s ten times the size of a big octopus.’
‘How large do you suppose this one is?’ Roger asked.
‘Judging by the size of those eyes,’ Hal said, ‘and the size of that tentacle we just saw, I’d guess-it might be fifty or sixty feet long.’
Roger whistled. ‘What a monster! It’s a good thing it’s not dangerous.’
‘Not dangerous!’ exclaimed Hal. ‘Guess again. People over here call it the nightmare of the Pacific. Another common name for it is devil-fish. Luckily it’s very seldom seen because it prefers to stay far down. There’s that tentacle again. Look at the big cups in it,’
‘Like the cups of an octopus,’ said Roger.
‘Yes, but quite different. The cups on the tentacle of an octopus are for hanging on. They are suction cups. The squid’s cups are for killing.’ He directed the searchlight into one of the cups. It was lined with big sharp teeth. ‘Anything or anybody that gets caught by those cups is dead before it gets to the squid’s mouth. And the mouth is even more dangerous. Let’s see if we can find it.’ He moved the searchlight down from the big eyes until it rested upon the animal’s enormous beak.
‘It looks as hard as iron,’ Roger said. ‘How could any animal with such a soft mushy body have such terrific jaws?’
‘It could crush a shark with those jaws,’ Hal said. ‘Or split open your head as easily as you could crack a walnut.’
Roger was impatient. ‘We can’t stay here forever. Why doesn’t it move along?’
‘It’s too much interested in us. It’s probably wondering if it can crack this nut and get at us.’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Roger suggested. ‘If you can’t push it down out of the way, why not lose it by going up a bit?’
‘I’ll try,’ said Hal. He turned on the lower jets. That should send the boat up. But Deepboat did not move.
‘The beast must have one of its tentacles wrapped around over the top of the ball.’
With its prey trying to escape, the animal became infuriated and threw other arms around Deepboat. Som
e of them almost covered the Plexiglas windows.
Roger was worried. ‘I think it’s gripping us with all eight arms.’
‘All ten,’ Hal said. ‘Your old friend the octopus has eight arms - the squid has two more.’ Hal turned on every ounce of power.
The ball did not move. They could hear the great jaws grinding on the steel hull. The monster was fighting mad now. The sharp teeth in its tentacles were scraping over the hull.
Hal turned off the engine. ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘We’ll just have to wait.’
The devil-fish kept on biting and scratching. It had never encountered an enemy as tough as this one. The ball was too big to be swallowed whole and it didn’t crack easily. The giant was becoming more and more irritated.
It’s getting on my nerves,’ Roger said.
‘Don’t worry. It can’t get through solid steel.’
But there was real cause for worry when the squid attacked one of the windows. Plexiglas was very tough, yet it was not steel. It could resist tremendous pressure. But it could be cut by something very sharp and the beak that was now pounding against it was very sharp.
Hal tried to estimate the size of the creature. It was about twelve feet around and must weigh at least a thousand pounds.
‘There’s one good thing,’ he said. ‘Even if he breaks that little window he can’t get in. He’s much too big.’
‘I’m not afraid of his getting in,’ Roger said. ‘But if he makes just a little hole, the sea can get in and what happens then?’
Hal didn’t like to terrify his young brother, but he must tell the truth. ‘In that case, I’m afraid it would be curtains for both of us. The water pressure must be at least a hundred times the air pressure in this ball. So the water would pour in at a tremendous rate and we would drown in a few minutes.’
The squid’s operations had attracted an audience. Fish of all sizes and shapes came up to watch what was going on. They were a rainbow of many colours in the glow of the searchlight.
Farther back there was something like a cloud passing through the water.
‘What do you suppose it is?’ wondered Roger. ‘It’s too big to be a fish. Perhaps if s just a shadow.’
The thing that looked like a great grey shadow came closer.
‘I hope …’ began Hal, but he didn’t, say what he hoped. He was disappointed when the shadow passed and was gone.
Presently it came back. Now it was squarely in the beam of the searchlight. It had an enormous block of a head as big as a bus. Its mouth was open and its huge teeth shone white.
‘A sperm whale!’ Hal exclaimed. ‘Perhaps it will help us out.’
‘What can it do?’ Roger asked.
‘It can save us from a watery death,’ said Hal, ‘if it takes a notion to do it. One of the sperm whale’s favourite foods is squid. Not the little squid a foot or two long that swim near the surface, but the juicy giants that live far down. I only hope it’s hungry.’
The whale appeared again. It came within a few yards of the squid, then swam away.
‘I’ll bet it’s afraid,’ Roger said.
‘It has good reason to be. Many whales have been killed by squid.’
‘I should think it would always win,’ Roger said. ‘It’s a lot bigger than the squid,’
‘Yes, but it doesn’t have ten tentacles thirty feet long armed with thousands of teeth.’
The whale drifted back and lay for a while watching its enemy with tiny eyes that contrasted oddly with the enormous hub caps of the squid.
Then with a mighty thrust of its tail, it shot forward. Its mouth, as big as a door, opened to take in its favourite food. It would have this meal all to itself because no other creature would dare attack the giant squid. The whale’s teeth looked as sharp as razors. They were no good for chewing, but could inflict a terrible bite.
The squid detached one arm from the steel ball and thrashed out against the approaching enemy. The whale snapped at the great snakelike tentacle and got it firmly between its teeth. Now it was teeth against teeth. When it came to teeth the squid was a match for the whale. The hundreds of sharp points on the great arm must sink deep into the whale’s enormous tongue, the most sensitive part of its entire body.
At once the whale spun about and made off, opening its mouth to get rid of this torture. But the squid did not let go. The result was a dizzy ride for the two passengers in Deepboat. They were being towed across the gorge with amazing speed. It was not a smooth ride. With every convulsive move of the whale in its effort to get free of the torturing arm, the ball bounced or rolled violently from one side to the other, tossing the boys against the walls until they were bruised and bloody.
Now they were getting near the other wall of the canyon. Their wobbling searchlight caught flashes of it, a straight up-and-down precipice of solid rock.
At the last moment the whale swung away from the cliff and the ball struck it with terrific force. The whirlabout had turned Deepboat upside down and the shock of striking the cliff while standing on their heads was so sharp that they almost passed out. Their big towboat now pulled them across towards the other cliff where they would probably get the same rough treatment.
But the whale, finding it could not shake the toothy arm loose from its tongue, closed its teeth upon it and bit it off. The sudden pain caused the squid to change colour to an angry red. Now it took away its nine remaining arms from Deepboat and wrapped them around the head and over the eyes of the whale. All the sharp knives on the great arms sank into the whale’s flesh and blood turned the water pink.
But the whale was by no means beaten. Its head was tied up but its mighty tail was still free. It could not reach its own head with its tail. With the intelligence of its cousin, the dolphin, it struck Deepboat a terrific blow and threw the hard steel ball up against the soft pulpy body of the squid.
The result was that the squid was turned into a pancake. It would soon round out again if left to itself, but the blow had also driven it up against the open jaws of the whale which promptly bit off a chunk of squid as big as a donkey.
That was too much for the giant of the deep. The whale dined on the remains of the dead squid at leisure, while the boys felt their bruises and collected their wits.
They were not only badly beaten up but very cold.
The thermometer told them that the temperature was only two degrees above freezing.
‘I suppose it will get colder and colder the farther down we go,’ Roger lamented.
It did seem to do just that until they finally broke through another thermocline.
‘Now we’re within a mile of the bottom,’ Hal said.
He studied the thermometer. ‘Seems to me it’s getting a bit warmer,’ he said.
‘How could that be?’
‘I don’t know. But I can guess. There may be volcanic fires under the bottom. You know, the farther down you go in some mines the hotter it gets. The subterranean heat beneath the floor of this trench may be warming up the bottom layer of water. Anyhow, there’s no doubt about it - the mercury is climbing a bit.’
Here was something new for Roger to worry about. Would they boil when they got to the bottom? Perhaps they would drop into an underwater volcano. He said as much to Hal.
‘I don’t think it will be that bad,’ Hal said. ‘Anyhow we’ll soon know.’ He watched the depth gauge. ‘Only thirty fathoms yet to go. Now only twenty. Now eighteen - fifteen - ten. Brace yourself—we may bump hard.’
But there was no jolt. Deepboat settled down into something as soft as a feather bed. They were in mud almost up to the windows.
They had expected it to be icy cold down here. But the mercury had actually risen a little. It had climbed two degrees. That was not much, but enough to indicate that there was heat under this mud.
The mud that had clouded the water when they struck was settling now.
They peered out of the windows. Here they were at the deepest known spot in all the oceans. The Grand Canyon was a m
ile deep. They had gone six miles deeper. They had gone down farther than Mount Everest goes up. Everest was the highest mountain on the planet. Sir Edmund Hillary had climbed it. He reached the very top, 29,028 feet above sea level. Everybody thought that was a great accomplishment - and so it was. But two boys had now gone down 36,198 feet below sea level. In a few minutes they would climb again, 7,170 feet more than Hillary had climbed - but it would be much easier with the help of Deepboat. They had proved that this craft could stand the terrific pressure of the deep. It was as tough as Piccard’s bathyscaph.
Deepboat was more like a submarine than a bathyscaph. No submarine had ever gone so far down. Perhaps builders of submarines would take advantage of what had been learned from this experiment and build subs that could go far deeper than a few hundred feet below the surface.
There was another thing they had not proved yet. Could life exist at this tremendous depth? Jacques Piccard had claimed that he saw animals on the bottom. He had taken photographs of them but because of the cloudiness of the water the photographs when developed didn’t show a thing. So nobody took his report very seriously. It was almost impossible to believe that any living thing could stand such enormous pressures.
‘Look,’ cried Hal. ‘Isn’t that thing moving?’
It was not just a cloud of mud. It was something alive. It rose from the bottom and swam slowly away. In a few minutes it returned bringing three others with it.
It was a flatfish, like a sole. It was about a foot long and half that across.
‘See - it has two eyes on top of its head.’
‘I think there’s something the matter with your head,’ said Roger. ‘You’re dreaming - like Piccard.’
‘Look for yourself,’ said Hal.
Roger had to believe it. There were two wide-open eyes and they were on top of the head.
‘All flatfish like sole and skate have both eyes on top,’ Hal reminded him.
‘But why does it have eyes?’ Roger objected. ‘If it weren’t for that searchlight, it would be pitch black down here. Animals that live where they don’t need eyes lose their sight.’
11 Diving Adventure Page 11