ral fins, there
protruded what appeared to be a skinny human arm, terminating in three
fingers and a thumb!

Then the fish was gone. Abbot snapped off his little light.

The diving-sphere quivered, as the hoisting-cable tautened. But
suddenly the sphere settled back to the bottom of the sea with a
jarring thud. "Cable's parted, sir!" spoke a frantic voice in his
ear-phones.

* * * * *

For a moment George Abbot sat stunned with horror. Then his mind began
to race, like a squirrel in a cage, seeking some way of escape.

Perhaps he could manage to unscrew the 400-pound trap door at the top
of the sphere, and shoot to the surface, with the bubbling-out of the
confined air. But his scientifically trained mind made some rapid
calculations which showed him this was absurd.

At the depth of a mile, the pressure is roughly 156 atmospheres, that
is to say, 156 times the air-pressure at the surface of the earth; and
the moment that his sphere was opened to this pressure, he would be
blown back inwardly away from the man-hole, and the air inside his
sphere would suddenly be compressed to only 1/156 of its former
volume.

Not only would this pressure be sufficient to squash him into a
mangled pulp, but also the sudden compression of the air inside the
sphere would generate enough heat to fry that mangled pulp to a crisp
cinder almost instantly.

As George Abbot came to a full realization of the horror of these
facts, he recoiled from the trap-door as though it were charged with
death.

"For Heaven's sakes, do something!" he shrieked in agony into the
transmitter.

"Courage, sir," came back the reply. "We are rigging up a grapple just
as fast as we can. Long before your oxygen gives out, we shall slide
it down to you along the telephone line, which is the only remaining
connection between us. When it settles about your sphere, and you can
see its hooks outside your window by the light of your pocket-flash,
let us know, and we'll trip the grapple and haul you up."

"Thank you," replied the young man.

* * * * *

He was calm now, but it was an enforced and numb kind of calmness.
Mechanically he throttled down his oxygen supply, so as to make it
last longer. Mechanically he took out his notebook and pencil and
started to write down, in the dark, his experiences; for he was
determined to leave a full account for posterity, even though he
himself should peri