The Kraken Wakes

Phyllis is, in some ways, more precise and practical.

'Seven thousand two hundred feet is just over a mile and a third,' she informed me, 'the pressure will be a little more than a ton and a third.'

'That's my continuity-girl,' I said. 'I don't know where I'd be without you.' I looked at the bathyscope. 'All the same — ' I added doubtfully.

'What?' she asked.

'Well, that chap at the Admiralty, Winters; he was talking in terms of four or five tons pressure — meaning, presumably, four or five miles down.' I turned to the Lieutenant-Commander. 'How deep is it where we're bound for?' I asked him.

'It's an area called the Cayman Trench, between Jamaica and Cuba,' he said. 'Parts of it go below five thousand.'

'But — ' I began, frowning.

'Fathoms, dear,' said Phyllis. 'Thirty thousand feet.'

'Oh,' I said. 'That'll be — er — something like five and a half miles?'

'Yes,' he said.

'Oh,' I said, again.

He returned to his public address manner.

'That,' he told the assembled crowd of us, 'is the present limit of our ability to make direct visual observations. However —' He paused to make a gesture somewhat in the manner of a conjuror towards a party of A.B.'s, and watched while they pulled the tarpaulin from another, similar, but smaller sphere. '— here,' he continued, 'we have a new instrument with which we hope to be able to make observations at something like twice the depth attainable by the bathyscope, perhaps even more. It is entirely automatic. In addition to registering pressures, temperature, currents, and so on, and transmitting the readings to the surface, it is equipped with five small television cameras, four of them giving all round horizontal coverage, and one transmitting the view vertically beneath the sphere.'

'This instrument,' continued another voice in good imitation of his own, 'we call the telebath.'

Facetiousness could not put a man like the Commander off his stroke. He continued his lecture. But the instrument had been christened, and the telebath it remained.

The three days after we reached our position were occupied with tests and adjustments of both the instruments. In one test Phyllis and I were allowed to make a dive of three hundred feet or so, cramped up in the bathyscope, 'just to get the feel of it'. We did that, and it gave us no envy of anyone making a deeper dive. Then, with all the gear fully checked, the real descent was announced for the morning of the fourth day.

Soon after sunrise we were clustering round the bathyscope where it rested in its cradle. The two naval technicians, Wiseman and Trant, who were to make the descent, wriggled themselves in through the narrow hole that was the entrance. The warm clothing they would need in the depths was handed in after them, for they could never have squeezed in wearing it. Then followed the packets of food and the vacuum-flasks of hot drinks. They made their final checks, gave their okays. The circular entrance-plug was swung over by the hoist, screwed gradually down into its seating, and bolted fast. The bathyscope was hoisted outboard, and hung there, swinging slightly. One of the men inside switched on his hand television-camera, and we ourselves, as seen from within the instrument, appeared on the screen.

'Okay,' said a voice from the loudspeaker. 'Lower away now.'

The winch began to turn. The bathyscope descended, and the water lapped at it. Presently it had disappeared from sight beneath the surface.

The descent was a long business which I do not propose to describe in detail. Frankly, as seen on the screen in the ship, it was a pretty boring affair to the non-initiate. Life in the sea appears to exist in fairly well-defined levels. In the better inhabited strata the water is full of plankton which behaves like a continuous dust-storm and obscures everything but creatures that approach very closely. At other levels where there is no plankton for food, there are consequently few fish. In addition to the tediousness of very limited views or dark emptiness, continuous attention to a screen that is linked with a slightly swinging and twisting camera has a dizzying effect. Both Phyllis and I spent much of the time during the descent with our eyes shut, relying on the loud-speaking telephone to draw our attention to anything interesting. Occasionally we slipped on deck for a cigarette.

There could scarcely have been a better day for the job. The sun beat fiercely down on decks that were occasionally sluiced with water to cool them off. The ensign hung limp, barely stirring. The sea stretched out flat to meet the dome of the sky which showed only one low bank of cloud, to the north, over Cuba, perhaps. There was scarcely a sound, either, except for the muffled voice of the loudspeaker in the mess, the quiet drone of the winch, and from time to time the voice of a deck-hand calling the tally of fathoms.

The group sitting in the mess scarcely spoke; they left that to the men now far below.

At intervals, the Commander would ask:

'All in order, below there?'

And simultaneously two voices would reply:

'Aye, aye, sir!'

Once a voice inquired:

'Did Beebe have an electrically-heated suit?'

Nobody seemed to know.

'I take my hat off to him if he didn't,' said the voice.

The Commander was keeping a sharp eye on the dials as well as watching the screen.

'Half-mile coming up. Check,' he said.

The voice from below counted:

'Four thirty-eight… Four thirty-nine… Now! Half-mile, sir.'

The winch went on turning. There wasn't much to see. Occasional glimpses of schools of fish hurrying off into the murk. A voice complained:

'Sure as I get the camera to one window a damn great fish comes and looks in at another.'

'Five hundred fathoms. You're passing Beebe now,' said the Commander.

'Bye-bye, Beebe,' said the voice. 'But it goes on looking much the same.'

Presently the same voice said:

'More life around just here. Plenty of squid, large and small. You can probably see 'em. There's something out this way, keeping on the edge of the light. A big thing. I can't quite — might be a giant squid — no! my God! It can't be a whale! Not down here!'

'Improbable, but not impossible,' said the Commander.

'Well, in that case — oh, it's sheered off now, anyway. Gosh! We mammals do get around a bit, don't we?'

In due course the moment arrived when the Commander announced:

'Passing Barton now,' and then added with an unexpected change of manner: 'From now on it's all yours, boys. Sure you're quite happy there? If you're not perfectly satisfied you've only to say.'

'That's all right, sir. Everything functioning okay. We'll go on.'

Up on deck the winch droned steadily.

'One mile coming up,' announced the Commander. When that had been checked he asked: 'How are you feeling now?'

'What's the weather like up there?' asked a voice.

'Holding well. Flat calm. No swell.'

The two down below conferred.

'We'll go on, sir. Could wait weeks for conditions like this again.'

'All right — if you're both sure.'

'We are, sir.'

'Very good. About three hundred fathoms more to go, then.'

There was an interval. Then:

'Dead,' remarked the voice from below. 'All black and dead now. Not a thing to be seen. Funny thing the way these levels are quite separate. Ah, now we can begin to see something below…. Squids again…. Luminous fish…. Small shoal, there, see?… There's — Gosh! —'

He broke off, and simultaneously a nightmare fishy horror gaped at us from the screen.

'One of nature's careless moments,' he remarked.

He went on talking, and the camera continued to give us glimpses of unbelievable monstrosities, large and small.

Presently the Commander announced:

'Stopping you now. Twelve hundred fathoms.' He picked up the telephone and spoke to the deck. The winch slowed and then ceased to turn.