young Abbot. What
were they doing out there in the watery-blue midnight? Perhaps, having
secured his sphere as a scientific specimen, they were already
preparing to cut into it so as to see what was inside. That these
fish could cut through four inches of steel was not so improbable as
it sounded, for had they not already succeeded in severing a rubber
cable an inch and a half thick, containing two heavy copper wires, and
also two inches of the finest, non-kinking steel rope!

The young scientist flashed his pocket torch out through the thick
quartz pane, but his enemies were nowhere in sight. Then he fell to
calculating his oxygen supply. His normal consumption was about half a
quart per minute, at which rate his two tanks would be good for
thirty-six hours. His chemical racks contained enough soda-lime to
absorb the excess carbon dioxide, enough calcium chloride to keep down
the humidity and enough charcoal to sweeten the body odors for much
more than that period.

For a moment, the thought of these facts encouraged him. He had been
down less than two hours. Perhaps the boat above him could affect his
rescue in the more than thirty-four hours which remained!

* * * * *

But then he realized that he had failed to take into consideration the
near-freezing temperature of the ocean depths. This temperature he
knew to be in the neighborhood of 39 degrees Fahrenheit--even though
no thermometer hung outside his window, as none could withstand the
frightful pressures at the bottom of the sea. For it is one of the
remarkable facts of inductive science that man has been able to figure
out _a priori_ that the temperature at all deep points of the ocean,
tropic as well as arctic, must always be stable at approximately 39
degrees.

Abbot was clad only in a light cotton sailor suit, and now that his
source of heat had been cut off by the severing of his power lines,
his prison was rapidly becoming unbearably chilly. His thick steel
sphere constituted such a perfect transmitter of heat that he might
almost as well have been actually swimming in water of 39 degrees
temperature, so far as comfort was concerned.

Abbot's emotions ran all the gamut from stupefaction, through dull
calmness, clear-headed thought, intense but aimless mental activity,
nervousness, frenzy, and insane delirium, back to stupefaction again.

During one of his periods of calmness, he figured out what an almost
total impos