Perhaps five minutes passed when the door leading forward was thrust open, and Captain Gavison climbed precariously into the room. All eyes were bent upon him in silent inquiry; but his grim, stoically firm countenance was far from reassuring. It was apparent that he had something to say, and that he did not care to say it; and several anxious moments elapsed while he stood glowering upon us, evidently undecided whether to give his message words. Yet even at this crisis he could not forget discipline. His first words brought us no information, and his first action was to station us about the room in orderly fashion, assigning each to some specific duty. “I will not keep the facts from you,” he declared, with slow, deliberate accentuation, when finally we were all in position. “Three of our compartments are flooded. The other compartments seem to be holding out as yet, but the great mass of water in our hold is bearing us rapidly downward, and the engines seem unable to neutralize the effect. At the last reading, we were nine hundred and twenty-seven feet below sea level.” “Great God! What are we to do about it?” I gasped, in biting terror. “Suggestions are in order,” stated the Captain, laconically. But no suggestion was forthcoming. “Of course, we are in no immediate danger ...” he resumed. But he might have spared his words. Most of us had had sufficient experience of undersea travel to know that the danger was real enough. Barring the remote contingency that the engines would be brought back into efficient working order, there were only two possibilities. On the one hand, we might reach the bottom of the sea, and, stranded there, would perish of starvation or slow suffocation. Or, in the second place, we might continue drifting downward until the tremendous pressure of the water, proving too strong even for the stout steel envelope of our vessel, would bend and crush it like an egg-shell. Although we could no longer guide our course, our gigantic searchlights were at once brought into play, piercing the water with brilliant yellow streamers. Yet they might have been searchlights in a tomb, for they showed us nothing except the minute wavy dark shapes that occasionally drifted in and out of our line of vision. There was something ghastly, I thought, about that light, that intense unearthly sallow light, which glided slowly in long curves and spirals about the thick enveloping darkness. And the very penetrating power of the rays served only to accentuate the horror. For the illumination ended in nothingness; nothingness seemed to stretch above us, beneath us, and to all sides of us; we were enfolded in it as in a black mantle; it seemed to be stretching out long arms to fetter us, to gather us up, to strangle us slyly. * * * * *