They had gone only seven hundred feet in
thirty-seven minutes. In spite of repeated signalling, their progress
during the next hour was even still more alarming, one hundred feet
taking exactly 59 minutes. To shorten detail, it required two hours more
to make another hundred feet; and then the Nautilus, after taking ten
minutes to crawl an inch further, came to a perfect stand still. The
pressure of the water had evidently now become too enormous to allow
further descent.
The Clubmen's distress was very great; Marston's, in particular, was
indescribable. In vain, catching at straws, he signalled "eastwards!"
"westwards!" "northwards!" or "southwards!" the Nautilus moved readily
every way but downwards.
"Oh! what shall we do?" he cried in despair; "Barbican, must we really
give you up though separated from us by the short distance of only a few
miles?"
At last, nothing better being to be done, the unwilling signal "heave
upwards!" was given, and the hauling up commenced. It was done very
slowly, and with the greatest care. A sudden jerk might snap the chains;
an incautious twist might put a kink on the air tube; besides, it was
well known that the sudden removal of heavy pressure resulting from
rapid ascent, is attended by very disagreeable sensations, which have
sometimes even proved fatal.
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