‘By and by they came up with the Horn; and if it had blown off the Plate, it now blew off the roof. Talk about wind and weather. They got them both for sure aboard the Coronet. And it blew all the sails off her, and she rolled all her masts out, and the seas made a breach of her bulwarks, and the ice knocked a hole in her bows. So watch and watch they pumped the old Coronet, and the leak gained steadily, and there they were hove to under a weather cloth, five and a half degrees to the south of anything. And while they were like this, just about giving up hope, the old man sent the watch below, and told them they could start prayers. So the Devil crept on to the top of the half-deck, to look through the scuttle, to see what the reefers were doing, and what kind of prayers Bill Harker was putting up. And he saw them all sitting round the table, under the lamp, with Bill Harker at the head. And each of them had a hand of cards, and a length of knotted rope-yarn, and they were playing able-whackets. Each man in turn put down a card, and swore a new blasphemy, and if his swear didn’t come as he played the card, then all the others hit him with their teasers. But they never once had a chance to hit Bill Harker. “I think they were right about his soul,” said the Devil. And he sighed, like he was sad.
‘Shortly after that the Coronet went down, and all hands drowned in her, saving only Bill and the Devil. They came up out of the smothering green seas, and saw the stars blinking in the sky, and heard the wind howling like a pack of dogs. They managed to get aboard the Coronet's hen-house, which had come adrift, and floated. The fowls were all drowned inside, so they lived on drowned hens. As for drink, they had to do without, for there was none. When they got thirsty they splashed their faces with salt water; but they were so cold they didn’t feel thirsty very bad. They drifted three days and three nights, till their skins were all cracked and salt-caked. And all the Devil thought of was whether Bill Harker had a soul. And Bill kept telling the Devil what a thundering big feed they would have as soon as they fetched to port, and how good a rum-hot would be, with a lump of sugar and a bit of lemon peel.
‘And at last the old hen-house came bump on to Tierra Del Fuego, and there were some natives cooking rabbits. So the Devil and Bill made a raid of the whole jing bang, and ate till they were tired. Then they had a drink out of a brook, and a warm by the fire, and a pleasant sleep. “Now,” said the Devil, “I will see if he’s got a soul. I’ll see if he give thanks.” So after an hour or two Bill took a turn up and down and came to the Devil. “It’s mighty dull on this forgotten continent,” he said. “Have you got a ha’penny?” “No,” said the Devil. “What in joy d’ye want with a ha’penny?” “I might have played you pitch and toss,” said Bill. “It was better fun on the hen-coop than here.” “I give you up,” said the Devil; “you’ve no more soul than the inner part of an empty barrel.” And with that the Devil vanished in a flame of sulphur.
'Bill stretched himself, and put another shrub on the fire. He picked up a few round shells, and began a game of knucklebones.’
H. G. Wells
IN THE ABYSS
Speculation as to what might lie in the depths of the world’s greatest oceans has absorbed oceanographers for years, as well as giving rise to a number of sea mysteries - the whereabouts of lost Atlantis being perhaps the most famous of these. With the development of deep-sea-diving equipment and the increasing capabilities of submarines, man is certainly getting closer to solving some of these mysteries, but doubtless the sea will preserve many more of them for generations to come.
In the area of speculative scientific writing, few names loom larger than Herbert George Wells (1866-1946): one of the founding fathers of Science Fiction. His works have not only taken readers to the planets (The First Men in the Moon, 1901), but also to the ends of time (The Time Machine, 1888) and even face to face with alien beings (The War of the Worlds, 1898). But Wells was also interested in the mysteries of his own world and in particular the unexplored regions of the globe, as described in novels like The Island of Dr Moreau (1896) and short stories such as ‘The Sea Raiders’.
One of his most intriguing pieces of speculation is to be found in this next story, ‘In The Abyss’. Back in the 1890s when it was written, the kind of equipment available for undersea exploration was still rather primitive and far from safe. Yet Wells could foresee a time when the deepest places might be reached, and explores the possibility in this strange and challenging adventure. . .
The lieutenant stood in front of the steel sphere and gnawed a piece of pine splinter. ‘What do you think of it, Steevens?' he asked.
‘It’s an idea,’ said Steevens, in the tone of one who keeps an open mind.
‘I believe it will smash - flat,’ said the lieutenant.
‘He seems to have calculated it all out pretty well,’ said Steevens, still impartial.
‘But think of the pressure,’ said the lieutenant. ‘At the surface of the water it’s fourteen pounds to the inch, thirty feet down it’s double that; sixty, treble; ninety, four times; nine hundred, forty times; five thousand, three hundred - that’s a mile - it’s two hundred and forty times fourteen pounds; that’s - let’s see -thirty hundredweight - a ton and a half, Steevens; a ton and a half to the square inch. And the ocean where he’s going is five miles deep. That’s seven and a half - ’
‘Sounds a lot,’ said Steevens, ‘but it’s jolly thick steel.’
The lieutenant made no answer, but resumed his pine splinter. The object of their conversation was a huge ball of steel, having an exterior diameter of perhaps nine feet. It looked like the shot for some Titanic piece of artillery. It was elaborately nested in a monstrous scaffolding built into the framework of the vessel, and the gigantic spars that were presently to sling it overboard gave the stem of the ship an appearance that had raised the curiosity of every decent sailor who had sighted it, from the Pool of London to the Tropic of Capricorn. In two places, one above the other, the steel gave place to a couple of circular windows of enormously thick glass, and one of these, set in a steel frame of great solidity, was now partially unscrewed. Both the men had seen the interior of this globe for the first time that morning. It was elaborately padded with air cushions, with little studs sunk between bulging pillows to work the simple mechanism of the affair. Everything was elaborately padded, even the Myers apparatus which was to absorb carbonic acid and replace the oxygen inspired by its tenant, when he had crept in by the glass manhole, and had been screwed in. It was so elaborately padded that a man might have been fired from a gun in it with perfect safety. And it had need to be, for presently a man was to crawl in through that glass manhole, to be screwed up tightly, and to be flung overboard, and to sink down - down -down, for five miles, even as the lieutenant said. It had taken the strongest hold of his imagination; it made him a bore at mess; and he found Steevens, the new arrival aboard, a godsend to talk to about it, over and over again.
‘It’s my opinion,’ said the lieutenant, ‘that that glass will simply bend in and bulge and smash, under a pressure of that sort. Daubrée has made rocks run like water under big pressures - and, you mark my words - ’
‘If the glass did break in,’ said Steevens, ‘what then?’
‘The water would shoot in like a jet of iron. Have you ever felt a straight jet of high-pressure water? It would hit as hard as a bullet. It would simply smash him and flatten him. It would tear down his throat, and into his lungs; it would blow in his ears - ’ ‘What a detailed imagination you have!’ protested Steevens, who saw things vividly.