"What's the weight of your heaviest cannon balls?" "Thirty pounds, Mr. Marston." "Can't you attach thirty of them to the Nautilus and sink us again?" "Certainly, Mr. Marston, if you wish it. It shall be the first thing done to-morrow." "To-night, Captain! At once! Barbican has not an instant to lose." "At once then be it, Mr. Marston. Just as you say." The new sinkers were soon attached to the Nautilus, which disappeared once more with all its former occupants inside, except the _Herald_ Reporter, who had fallen asleep over his notes, or at least seemed to be. He had probably made up his mind as to the likelihood of the Nautilus ever getting back again. The second descent was quicker than the first, but just as futile. At 1152 feet, the Nautilus positively refused to go a single inch further. Marston looked like a man in a stupor. He made no objection to the signal given by the others to return; he even helped to cut the ropes by which the cannon balls had been attached. Not a single word was spoken by the party, as they slowly rose to the surface. Marston seemed to be struggling against despair. For the first time, the impossibility of the great enterprise seemed to dawn upon him. He and his friends had undertaken a great fight with the mighty Ocean, which now played with them as a giant with a pigmy. To reach the bottom was evidently completely out of their power; and what was infinitely worse, there was nothing to be gained by reaching it. The Projectile was not on the bottom; it could not even have got to the bottom. Marston said it all in a few words to the Captain, as the Clubmen stepped on deck a few hours later: "Barbican is floating midway in the depths of the Pacific, like Mahomet in his coffin!" Blindly yielding, however, to the melancholy hope that is born of despair, Marston and his friends renewed the search next day, the 30th, but they were all too worn out with watching and excitement to be able to continue it longer than a few hours. After a night's rest, it was renewed the day following, the 31st, with some vigor, and a good part of the ocean lying between Guadalupe and Benito islands was carefully investigated to a depth of seven or eight hundred feet. No traces whatever of the Projectile. Several California steamers, plying between San Francisco and Panama, passed the _Susquehanna_ within hailing distance. But to every question, the invariable reply one melancholy burden bore: "No luck!" All hands were now in despair. Marston could neither eat nor drink. He never even spoke the whole day, except on two occasions. Once, when somebody heard him muttering: "He's now seventeen days in the ocean!"