Garrett P. Serviss, page 25
“As the whole earth has gained in weight by the condensation of the nebula upon it, its plastic crust will proportionally gain in girth by internal expansion, which will finally bring all the old continents to the surface, but Asia first of all.”
Whether Cosmo Versál’s hypotheses were right or wrong, he always had a reply to any objection, and the prestige which he had gained by his disastrously correct theory about the watery nebula gave him an advantage so enormous that nobody felt enough confidence in himself to stand long against anything that he might advance.
Accordingly, everybody in the Ark found himself looking forward to the re-emergence of Mount Everest almost as confidently as did their leader, Cosmo Versál.
They began their waiting voyage by sailing across the plateau of Tibet and the lofty chain of the Yung-ling Mountains out over China.
The interest of all aboard was excited to the highest degree when they found themselves sailing over the mighty domains of the Chinese President-Emperor, who had developed an enormous power, making him the ruler of the whole eastern world.
He, with his half-billion or more of subjects, now reposed at the bottom of an ocean varying from three to five or six miles in depth. Deep beneath the Ark lay the broad and once populous valleys of the Yangtse-Kiang and the Hoang-Ho, the “Scourge of China.”
Finally they swung round northward and re-entered the region of Tibet, seeking once more the drowned crown of the world. In the meantime Cosmo had had the theatrical exhibitions and the concerts resumed in the evenings, and sometimes there was music, and even dancing on the long promenades, open to the outer air.
Let not that be a matter of surprise or blame, for the spirit of joy in life is unconquerable, as it should be if life is worth while. So it happened that, not infrequently, and not with any blameworthy intention, or in any spirit of heartless forgetfulness, this remarkable company of world-wanderers drifted, in the moonlight, above the universal watery grave of the drowned millions, with the harmonies of stringed instruments stealing out upon the rippling waves, and the soft sound of swiftly shuffling feet tripping over the smooth decks.
Costaké Theriade and Sir Wilfrid Athelstone resumed their stormy efforts to talk each other down, but now even Cosmo was seldom a listener, except when he had to interfere to keep the peace.
King Richard and Amos Blank, however, usually heard them out, but it was evident from their expressions that they enjoyed the prospective fisticuffs rather more than the exposition of strange scientific doctrines.
Perhaps the happiest man aboard was Captain Arms. At last he could make as many and as certain observations as he chose, and he studied the charts of Asia until he declared that now he knew the latitude and longitude of the mountains better than he did those of the seaports of the old oceans.
He had not the least difficulty in finding the location of Mount Everest again, and when he announced that they were floating over it, Cosmo immediately prepared to make another measurement of the depth of water on the peak. The result was hardly gratifying. He found that it had diminished but four inches. He said to Captain Arms:
“The range is rising, but less rapidly than I hoped. Even if the present rate should be doubled it would require five years for the emergence of the highest point. Instead of remaining in this part of the world we shall have an abundance of time to voyage round the earth, going leisurely, and when we get back again perhaps there will be enough land visible to give us a good start.”
“Mr. Versál,” said the captain, “you remember that you promised me that I should drop my anchor on the head of Mount Everest if I worked a traverse across Beluchistan.”
“Certainly I remember it; and also that you were not much disposed to undertake the task. However, you did it well, and I suppose that now you want me to fulfill the bargain?”
“Exactly,” replied the captain. “I’d just like to get a mud-hook in the top-knot of the earth. I reckon that that’ll lay over all the sea yarns ever spun.”
“Very well,” returned Cosmo. “Try it, if you’ve got cable enough.”
“Enough and to spare,” cried the captain, “and I’ll have the
Gaurisankar, as the Frenchman calls it, hooked in a jiffy.”
This was an operation which called everybody to the rails to watch it. Hundreds of eyes tried to follow the anchor as it descended perpendicularly upon the mountain-top, nearly forty feet beneath. Through the clear water they could dimly see the dark outline of the summit below, and they gazed at it with wonder, and a sort of terror.
Somehow they felt that never before had they fully appreciated the awful depths over which they had been floating. The anchor steadily dropped until it rested on the rock.
It got a hold finally, and in a few minutes the great vessel was swinging slowly round, held by a cable whose grasp was upon the top of the world! When the sensation had been sufficiently enjoyed the anchor was tripped, and the nose of the Ark was turned northwestward. Cosmo Versál announced his intention to circumnavigate the drowned globe.
The news of what they were about to do was both welcome and saddening to the inmates of the vessel. They wished to pass once more over the lands where they had first seen the light, and at the same time they dreaded the memories that such a voyage would inevitably bring back with overwhelming force. But, at any rate, it would be better than drifting for years over Tibet and China.
While everybody else was discussing the prospects of the new voyage, and wondering how long it would last, Yves de Beauxchamps was concentrating all his attention upon a new project which had sprung up in his active mind as soon as Cosmo’s intention was announced. He took Cosmo aside and said to him:
“M. Versál, the dearest memory that I have treasured in my heart is that of the last sight of my drowned home, my beautiful dead Paris. It may be that the home-loving instincts of my race arouse in me a melancholy pleasure over such a sight which would not be shared by you, of a different blood; but if, perchance, you do share my feelings on this subject I believe that I can promise you a similar visit to the great metropolis where your life began, and where you executed those labors whose result has been to preserve a remnant of humanity to repeople the earth.”
Cosmo Versál’s quick intelligence instantly comprehended the Frenchman’s design, but it startled him, and apparently insuperable difficulties at once occurred to his mind.
“M. De Beauxchamps,” he responded, grasping his friend warmly by the hand, “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your amiable intention, and I assure you that nothing could afford me greater satisfaction than to see once more that mighty city, even though it can now be but an awful ruin, tenanted by no life except the terrible creatures of the deep. But, while I foresee what your plan must be, I can hardly conceive that its execution could be possible. You are thinking, of course, of constructing a diving apparatus capable of penetrating to a depth of nearly six miles in the sea. Setting aside the question whether we could find in the stores of the Ark the materials that would be needed, it appears to me most improbable that we could make the apparatus of sufficient strength to withstand the pressure, and could then cause it to sink to so great a depth, and afterward bring it safely to the surface.”
The Frenchman smiled.
“M. Versál,” he replied, “I have taken the liberty to look over the stock of materials which you have so wisely prepared for possible repairs to the Ark and for use after the Ark lands, and I know that among them I can find all that I shall need. You yourself know how completely you are provided with engineering tools and machines of all kinds. You have even an electric foundry aboard. With the aid of your mechanical genius, and the skill of your assistants, together with that of my own men, who are accustomed to work of this kind, I have not the faintest doubt that I can design and construct a diving-bell, large enough to contain a half-dozen persons, and perfectly capable of penetrating to any depth. Of course I cannot make it of levium, but you have a sufficient supply of herculeum steel, the strength of which is so immense that the walls of the bell can be made to remit the pressure even at a depth of six miles. From my previous experiments I am confident that there will be no difficulty in sinking and afterward raising this apparatus. It is only necessary that the mean specific gravity of the bell shall be greater than that of the water at a given depth, and you know that as far back as the end of the nineteenth century your own countrymen sent down sounding apparatus more than six miles in the Pacific Ocean, near the island of Guam.”
“But the air inside the bell—” Cosmo began.
“Excuse me,” interrupted De Beauxchamps, “but that air need be under no greater pressure than at the surface. I shall know how to provide for that. Remember the Jules Verne. Simply give me carte blanche in this matter, let me have the materials to work with, afford me the advantage of your advice and assistance whenever I shall need them, and I promise you that by the time we have arrived over the site of New York we shall be prepared for the descent.”
Cosmo was deeply impressed by the Frenchman’s enthusiastic self-confidence. He had a great admiration for the constructor of the Jules Verne, and, besides, the proposed adventure was exactly after his own heart. After meditating a while, he said heartily:
“Well, M. De Beauxchamps, I give my consent. Everything you wish shall be at your disposal, and you can begin as soon as you choose. Only, let the thing be kept a secret between us and the workmen who are employed. If it should turn out a failure it would not do that the people in the Ark should be aware of it. I can give you a working room on one of the lower decks, where there will be no interference with your proceedings, and no knowledge of what you are about can leak out.”
“That is exactly what I should wish,” returned De Beauxchamps, smiling with delight, “and I renew my promise that you shall not be disappointed.”
So, without a suspicion of what was going on entering the minds of any person in the great company outside the small company of men who were actually employed in the work, the construction of De Beauxchamps’s great diving-bell was begun, and pushed with all possible speed, consistent with the proper execution of the work. In the meantime the Ark continued its course toward the west.
They ran slowly, for there was no hurry, and the Ark had now become to its inhabitants as a house and a home—their only foothold on the whole round earth, and that but a little floating island of buoyant metal. They crossed the Pamirs and the Hindu-Kush, the place where the Caspian Sea had been swallowed up in the universal ocean, and ran over Ararat, which three months before had put them into such fearful danger, but whose loftiest summit now lay twelve thousand feet beneath their keel.
At length, after many excursions toward the north and toward the south, in the halcyon weather that had seldom failed since the withdrawal of the nebula, they arrived at the place (or above it) which had stood during centuries for a noon-mark on the globe.
It was midday when Captain Arms, having made his observations, said to
Cosmo and the others on the bridge:
“Noon at Greenwich, and noon on the Ark. Latitude, fifty-one degrees thirty minutes. That brings you as nearly plumb over the place as you’d be likely to hit it. Right down there lies the old observatory that set the chronometers of the world, and kept the clocks and watches up to their work.”
King Richard turned aside upon hearing the captain’s words. They brought a too vivid picture of the great capital, six miles under their feet, and a too poignant recollection of the disastrous escape of the royal family from overwhelmed London seven months before.
As reckoned by the almanac, it was the 15th of September, more than sixteen months since Cosmo had sent out his first warning to the public, when the Ark crossed the meridian of seventy-four degrees west, in about forty-one degrees north latitude, and the adventurers knew that New York was once more beneath them.
There was great emotion among both passengers and crew, for the majority of them had either dwelt in New York or been in some way associated with its enterprises and its people, and, vain as must be the hope of seeing any relic of the buried metropolis, every eye was on the alert.
They looked off across the boundless sea in every direction, interrogating every suspicious object on the far horizon, and even peering curiously into the blue abyss, as if something might suddenly appear there which would speak to them like a voice from the past.
But they saw only shafts of sunlight running into bottomless depths, and occasionally some oceanic creature floating lazily far below. The color of the sea was wonderful. It had attracted their attention after the submergence of Mount Everest, but at that time it had not yet assumed its full splendor.
At first, no doubt, there was considerable dissolved matter in the water, but gradually this settled, and the sea became bluer and bluer—not the deep indigo of the old ocean, but a much lighter and more brilliant hue—and here, over the site of New York, the waters were of a bright, luminous sapphire, that dazzled the eye.
Cosmo declared that the change of the sea-color was undoubtedly due to some quality in the nebula from whose condensation the water had been produced, but neither his own analyses, nor those of the chemists aboard the Ark, were able to detect the subtle element to whose presence the peculiar tint was due.
But whatever it may have been, it imparted to the ocean an ethereal, imponderous look, which was sometimes startling. There were moments when they almost expected to see it expand back into the nebulous form and fly away.
CHAPTER XXV
NEW YORK IN HER OCEAN TOMB
During the long voyage from the sunken Himalayas to still deeper sunken New York, De Beauxchamps, with his fellow-countrymen and the skilled mechanics assigned by Cosmo Versál to aid them, had finished the construction of the huge diving-bell. No one not in the secret had the slightest idea of what had been done, owing to the remote situation of the deck on which the construction was carried out.
Now, while a thousand pairs of eyes were interrogating the smooth surface of the sea, and striving to penetrate its cerulean depths, a great surprise was sprung upon the passengers. The rear gangway of the lowest deck was cleared, a heavy crane-like beam was set projecting over the water, and men began to rig a flexible cable, which had been specially prepared for the purpose of lowering the bell into the depths, and of raising it again when the adventurers should wish to return to the surface. Everybody’s attention was immediately attracted to these strange preparations, and the utmost curiosity was aroused. A chorus of wondering exclamations broke out when a metallic globe, twenty feet in diameter, and polished until it shone like a giant thermometer bulb, was rolled out and carefully attached to the cable by means of a strong ring set in one side of the bell. The excitement of the passengers would soon have become uncontrollable if Cosmo had not at this point summoned the entire ship’s company into the great saloon. As soon as all were assembled he mounted his dais and began to speak.
“My fellow-citizens of the old world, which has perished, and of the new, which is to take its place,” he said, “we owe to the genius of M. De Beauxchamps an apparatus which is about to enable us to inspect, by an actual visit, the remains of the vast metropolis, which we saw in all its majesty and beauty but so few months ago, and which now lies forever silent at the bottom of this universal ocean.
“If it were practicable I should wish to afford to every one of you a farewell glimpse of that mighty city, to which the hearts of so many here are bound, but you can readily understand that that would be impossible. Only six persons can go in this exploring bell, and they have been chosen; but a faithful account will be brought back to you of all that they see and learn. The adventuring company will consist of M. De Beauxchamps, M. Pujol, his first assistant, Mr. Amos Blank, King Richard, Professor Abel Able, and myself. Captain Arms has ascertained the location of the center of Manhattan Island, over which we are now floating. The quietness of the sea, the absence of any apparent current, and the serenity of the heavens are favoring circumstances, which may be relied upon to enable Captain Arms to keep the Ark constantly poised almost precisely over our point of descent. It is not possible to predict the exact duration of our absence in the depths, but it will not, in any case, exceed about twenty hours.
“Once arrived at the bottom, nearly six miles down, we shall attach the cable to some secure anchorage, by means of a radio-control, operated from within the bell, and then, with the bell free, we shall make explorations, as extensive as possible. The radio-control of which I have spoken governs also the attachment of the cable to the bell. This appliance has been prepared and tested with such care that we have no doubt of its entire efficiency. I mention these things in order to remove from your minds any fear as to the success of our enterprise.
“The bell being once detached, we shall be able to move it from point to point by means of a pair of small propellers, which you will perceive on the outside of the bell, and which are also controlled from within. These will be used to increase our speed of descent. From a calculation of the density of the sea-water at the depth to which we shall descend, we estimate that the bell with its contents will press upon the bottom with a gravitational force of only five pounds, so that it will move with very slight effort, and may even, when in motion, float like a fish.
“For the purposes of observation we have provided, on four sides of the bell, a series of circular windows, with glass of immense thickness and strength, but of extraordinary transparency. Through these windows we shall be able to see in almost all directions. It was our intention to provide wireless telephone apparatus with which we might have kept you informed of all our doings and discoveries, but unfortunately we have found it impracticable to utilize our control for that purpose. We shall, however, be able to send and receive signals as long as we are connected with the cable.
