beneath the waters. A
double anxiety now possessed all on board the _Susquehanna_: the
prisoners in the Nautilus were in danger as well as the prisoners in the
Projectile. Marston and his friends, however, were anything but
disquieted on their own account, and, pencil in hand and noses flattened
on the glass plates, they examined carefully everything they could see
in the liquid masses through which they were descending.

For the first five hundred feet, the descent was accomplished with
little trouble. The Nautilus sank rather slowly, at a uniform rate of a
foot to the second. It had not been two minutes under water when the
light of day completely disappeared. But for this the occupants were
fully prepared, having provided themselves with powerful lamps, whose
brilliant light, radiating from polished reflectors, gave them an
opportunity of seeing clearly around it for a distance of eight or ten
feet in all directions. Owing to the superlatively excellent
construction of the Nautilus, also on account of the _scaphanders_, or
suits of diving armor, with which Marston and his friends had clothed
themselves, the disagreeable sensations to which divers are ordinarily
exposed, were hardly felt at all in the beginning of the descent.

Marston was about to congratulate his companions on the favorable
auspices inaugurating their trip, when Murphy, consulting the
instrument, discovered to his great surprise that the Nautilus was not
making its time. In reply to their signal "faster!" the downward
movement increased a little, but it soon relaxed again. Instead of less
than two minutes, as at the beginning, it now took twelve minutes to
make a hundred feet. 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 reall