And I was chosen for such a voyage as this! I suddenly saw Dr. Plantet to be a name immortal; and the man himself sat here planning his voyage into the great Pacific. And it seemed that something of Balboa and Magellan and Tasman must be here in the room with us now, hovering here--something of them, come here to inspire and to welcome this new maker of the history of the sea. And I was chosen to be upon such a voyage as this! I think that the humble sailors of those ancient lurching ships were thrilled by the adventure of their enterprise, but thrilled even more by a fear as they fronted the unknown. CHAPTER IV. A MARVELOUS DEEP-SEA CRAFT. The Dolphin was ready. We went down to Norfolk with Dr. Plantet upon his last inspection. At least, Polly and I went; Arturo did not go. He was ill, he said, and indeed he looked it. Flushed of face, with cheeks these last days gone thinner; brooding eyes, with an uneasy, restless gaze that seemed always to avoid us. Sardonic words came from Dr. Plantet that morning when we left. Arturo did not answer them; he moved away in the library, as if suddenly threatened with childish tears. And Dr. Plantet, wounded to the core of him, I know turned his back upon his son and stalked grimly out. I recall that as we ascended the incline to the air-stage runway I glanced over to the house. At the library window Arturo’s white face was staring after us. Was he afraid? He had said he would go with us on the voyage, of course. Polly was going. We needed a cook; some one to care for our physical wants. Who could do that better than Polly? It was characteristic of Dr. Plantet that he should thus be willing to expose her to danger. A stoicism, a subversion of all his instinctive inner feelings of fear--and a warm pride in her that she should want to aid us and her world. How much more keenly, then, did he feel shame for Arturo! Was the boy a physical coward? Arturo had said he wanted to go, of course. He was to record in detail our findings; cartographer upon this adventure to chart the unknown deeps. He had a skill with mathematical drawings; I could imagine such a task thrilling him. Polly tried to hide for him his lame enthusiasm. His fear? We never discussed it. And I think now it was very strange that we so little comprehended this boy we all loved. We stood in the Norfolk shops, where the artificial testing canal came up like a dark thread; stood gazing at the Dolphin as she hung in the cradle over the rectangle of water waiting to receive her. A little dolphin of a ship indeed, hanging there with her _ralite_ hull smooth as burnished copper. A dolphin with trimmed tail and sharply pointed nose. Eighty-two feet of burnished hull, sleek as the body of a seal.