sibility there was of the chance that his ship, one mile
above him on the surface, could ever find his sphere with grappling
hooks. Yet he prayed for that chance. A single chance in a million
sometimes does happen.

* * * * *

Several hours had by now elapsed since the parting of the young
scientist's cables. It was bitterly cold inside the sphere. In order
to keep warm, he had to exercise during his calm moments as
systematically as his cramped quarters would permit. During his
frantic moments he got plenty of exercise automatically. And of course
all this movement used up more than the normal amount of oxygen, so
that he was forced to open the valves on his tanks to two or three
times their normal flow. His span of further life was thereby cut to
ten or twelve hours, if indeed he could keep himself warm for that
long.

Why didn't the people on the boat do something!

He was just about to indulge in one of his frantic fits of despair,
when he heard or felt--the two senses being strangely commingled in
his present situation--a clank or thump upon the top of his
bathysphere. Instantly hope flooded him. Could it be that the one
chance in a million had actually happened, and that a grapple from the
boat above had actually found him?

With feverish expectation, he pressed the button of his little
electric pocket flashlight, and sent its feeble beam out through one
of the quartz-glass windows into the blue-black depths beyond.

No hooks in front of this window. He tried the others. No hooks there,
either. But he did see plenty of the superhuman fish. Eighteen of
them, he counted, in sight at one time. And also two huge snake-like
creatures with crested backs and maned heads, veritable sea-serpents.

As there was nothing the young man could do to assist in the grappling
of his sphere by his friends in the boat above, he devoted his time to
jotting down a detailed description of these two new beasts and of
their behavior.

One of the sharks appeared to be leading or driving them up to the
bathysphere; and when they got close enough, Abbot was surprised to
see that they wore what appeared to be a harness!

* * * * *

The clanking upon the bathysphere continued, and now the young man
learned its cause. It was not the grapple hooks from his ship, but
chains--chains which the man-armed sharks were wrapping around the
bathysphere.

Two more of the harnesse