“Those plans were more daring than the worst enemies of Agripides could have anticipated. He proposed, in a word, to cover a large part of Atlantis with an enormous glass wall, reaching like an artificial sky, hundreds of feet above ground, and thick enough to withstand the pressure of unthinkable tons of water. Near the base of this wall should be two great valves, one through which the ocean might be admitted into a broad canal or artificial river, and a second (at the opposite end of Atlantis) through which the waters might be forced out again by means of gigantic intra-atomic pumps. I need not mention, of course, that deep wells and distilled sea water would serve for domestic and drinking purposes; that decomposed water would provide sufficient oxygen for breathing; and that artificial sunlight, synthesized chemically so as to produce the life-giving elements of the original, would not only supply illumination but would support vegetation and human life as well.” “Yes, yes, that is all very good,” said I, feeling that Aelios had not yet touched upon the most essential fact of all. “But how did Agripides propose to sink the island beneath the sea?” “That is a difficult question,” she murmured, with a smile that was worth more to me than volumes of knowledge. “It involves technical questions of engineering with which, I must confess, I am very poorly acquainted. But, as I understand it, what Agripides proposed was that enormous tank be buried under the sea bottom far to the west of Atlantis, and that, at a given signal, the water should be raised to boiling point by an application of intra-atomic heat. The resulting tons of steam, in their fury to escape, would create an explosion that would burst the very floor of the sea; in one direction there would be a gigantic upheaval, and a lifting of the ocean bed; and in another direction, by way of reaction, there would be a sinking of the ocean bottom in an effort of the strata not directly affected, to fill in the gap left by those displaced. And while a whole vast area would rise thousands of feet (although not to the level of the water), another area would be forced downward an equal distance; and that area, which would be of enormous extent, would include the island of Atlantis. To use a crude illustration, one may think of a common plank, balanced on its center, of which one end cannot be tilted upward without causing the other end to slant down; and one may imagine Atlantis as reposing on the lower slope of such a plank.” * * * * * “But that is all mere theory,” I pointed out. “Certainly, Agripides wouldn’t dare to sink the island merely on the basis of such unproved calculations.”