Zenas had not stopped to figure out the displacement of the container of a well-developed scientific brain. It was considerable. Much of the water splashed out on the floor, and not a little of it went down inside the scientist's collar. Nothing daunted by the cold trickle of the inundation, he bravely kept his head in the bucket, from which arose at once a prodigious gurgling and bubbling. The old man's shoulders shook as though a fit of coughing had seized him. One minute, two, three, passed. Zenas stood so still that Polaris became alarmed. He stepped to the geologist's side and shook him by the arm. The only response he got was an impatient gesture of a hand, which seemed to say, "Go away and don't bother me." Presently Wright raised his head from the depths of the bucket, and ludicrous enough he looked, with the odd snout of the mask projecting from his face, his white thatch of hair all plastered flat and the water running from his beard and making a mess of his cravat and shirt front. But above the mask his little dark eyes were triumphant. When he saw Polaris at his side, he could scarcely wait to unfasten the mask. "There," he shouted, and he shook the thing above his head, "there is one of the greatest inventions of modern times. I don't know what is in the inside of it, or just what it does, but I'll find out. If that chap yonder is the inventor of it, he can take it to the United States, take out a patent on it and make a scandalous amount of dollars, and we can all become human submarines. How long was I down?" "About five minutes, Daddy Wright," said the girl, who had taken a strong liking to the plucky old geologist and his bluff ways. "Five minutes!" Wright's tones were awestruck. "And I took every breath regularly and naturally, except when I had to sneeze! And it was real oxygen I got, too. Not a drop of water came through this thing, and it was very good breathing. Well, I've made two discoveries." "And those are?" Polaris questioned. "That our friend yonder with the red topknot can live under the water like a fish, _and that he wears armor of gold which makes a light in the dark_. Look here." Wright took up the open helmet. Stepping to the switch, he shut off the lights in the laboratory. Faintly at first, and then strongly and more strongly, the helmet glowed in the darkness. The light grew, until the two men and the girl, standing close together, could dimly see each other's faces. It was uncanny, this strange metal headpiece with its fan-shaped crest, all luminous with a flickering and phosphorescent radiance. "What does it?" Rose Emer whispered, the tempest for the time forgotten. Zenas Wright turned on the lights.