the
Projectile, but he had done it all, he said, more as a matter of duty
than because he believed that any good could result from it; in fact, he
never expected to see the bold adventurers again either living or dead.
Murphy, who well understood not only what machinery was capable of
effecting, but also what it would surely fail in, at first expressed the
greatest confidence in the prosperous issue of the undertaking. But when
he learned, as he now did for the first time, that the ocean bed on
which the Projectile was lying could be hardly less than 20,000 feet
below the surface, he assumed a countenance as grave as the Captain's,
and at once confessed that, unless their usual luck stood by them, his
poor friends had not the slightest possible chance of ever being fished
up from the depths of the Pacific.

The conversation maintained among the officers and the others on board
the _Susquehanna_, was pretty much of the same nature. It is almost
needless to say that all heads--except Belfast's, whose scientific mind
rejected the Projectile theory with the most serene contempt--were
filled with the same idea, all hearts throbbed with the same emotion.
Wouldn't it be glorious to fish them up alive and well? What were they
doing just now? Doing? _Doing!_ Their bodies most probably were lying in
a shapeless pile on the floor of the Projectile, like a heap of clothes,
the uppermost man being the last smothered; or perhaps floating about in
the water inside the Projectile, like dead gold fish in an aquarium; or
perhaps burned to a cinder, like papers in a "champion" safe after a
great fire; or, who knows? perhaps at that very moment the poor fellows
were making their last and almost superhuman struggles to burst their
watery prison and ascend once more into the cheerful regions of light
and air! Alas! How vain must such puny efforts prove! Plunged into ocean
depths of three or four miles beneath the surface, subjected to an
inconceivable pressure of millions and millions of tons of sea water,
their metallic shroud was utterly unassailable from within, and utterly
unapproachable from without!

Early on the morning of December 29th, the Captain calculating from his
log that they must now be very near the spot where they had witnessed
the extraordinary phenomenon, the _Susquehanna_ hove to. Having to wait
till noon to find his exact position, he ordered the steamer to take a
short circular course of a few hours' duration, in hope