The Mysterious Fluid Read online

  Finally, gradually regaining his self-composure, he was able to articulate, slowly: “Well, my friends, indeed, as I suspected at first glance, these characters really are half-Hebrew and half-Syriac, profoundly altered and modified by time, but with a little groping and a certain amount of time—because the vowels are naturally lacking, since this is a primitive language, I’ve had to consider the alternatives—I’ve arrived at the following translation, and you’ll be as amazed as I am:

  “We are poor folk who have been living on the sea-bed since the famous Deluge of Noah—which is to say, about 4900 years. If you still understand our ancient patriarchal language, which was spoken by Tubalcain and Methuselah, whose traditions and primitive mores we pride ourselves on having conserved in the depths of our maritime grottoes, O men of the land, find a means of communicating with us.

  “By virtue of shipwrecks that sometimes bring us boxes of books, we have contrived an approximate understanding of your modern languages, which all derive from ours, and are fairly familiar with what is happening on the land surface, but we would be glad to be able to communicate with you, thanks to your modern scientific means, and to tell you the history of a branch of your family of which you are certainly unaware.”

  The captain was only just able to pronounce the last lines, and it is only fair to add that his very legitimate emotion had gripped all the surrounding crewmen. The adventure was so extraordinary and so unexpected that it made a strong impact on the crude and primitive imagination of the seamen.

  “Well, captain, what are you going to do?” said the first mate, thus formulating the question that was on everyone’s lips.

  “It’s quite simple. I’ll try to draft a clear reply in this primitive patriarchal language, as they call it. Fortunately, I nearly became a rabbi and I have a thorough knowledge of Hebrew, without which we would be f…”33

  And Jacob Laquedem went to shut himself in his cabin again—but the drafting of the reply must have been laborious, for it was not until the following morning, having spent much of the sleepless night going over it repeatedly, that he was finally able to read it to his second-in-command—translating the meaning, of course.

  This is what the laconic note said:

  Those aboard my ship—specifically me, Jacob Laquedem, long-haul captain, in command, in my capacity as an Israelite—are glad to be able to understand you, or very nearly, and thus to be the first to enter into communication with the submarine people who inhabit the sea-bed.

  You will find on the claw of the probe, along with the ball enclosing this note, an instrument with which you are doubtless unfamiliar. Speak into it softly and clearly; I will write under your dictation, and when I return to France, I shall carefully translate your story with my old friend Vibert, who is very interested in such matters and will then inform the world of your existence and revelations, if you think it appropriate. Every time you hear an electric bell, stop speaking into the mouth of the tube and place your ear to the receiver instead, for I will then speak to you.

  With that, be patient, and accept the compliments of the people of the land to the people of the sea, while waiting for me to find a means of paying you a visit, if scientific progress ever permits me to do so. In the meantime, I shall send down the probe with this note and the telephone, which will still constitute a procedure as long as it is delicate.

  “Well, my lads, that’s the little morsel I’m sending to these porpoises—do you like it?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “I found it very difficult to write—in my trade, literary talent takes flight…hang on, that rhymes! Let’s move quickly. Get everything ready to send the probe down as soon as possible, with the telephonic apparatus. Don’t hurry, though—we don’t want any snags.”

  The instruction was unnecessary; all the members of the crew, naturally devoted to their captain, were impassioned by this strange affair. I shall pass over in silence the vicissitudes of sending down the probe, which was successfully accomplished in the end, in order to get on with the long and curious story that the citizen living at a depths of 9429 meters on the bed of the Pacific, at the very bottom of the Aldrich Trench, told my excellent friend Jacob Laquedem.

  As the voice was clear and the diction perfect, once the telephone receiver was attached to his head, in order to avoid any inconvenience, he was able to transcribe the following story very accurately.

  We have both retranslated it and checked it with extreme care, so, without further commentary, here is the truly novel and curious narrative.

  III. In the Ocean depths. A strange population.

  The revealing missive continued.

  “You are not unaware that when Noah retreated with his entire family and the animals fleeing the waters, not in the symbolic Ark but simply to the summit of Mount Ararat, what is conventionally called the Deluge did not last for forty days, but for many years.

  “Thus, after some years, Noah and his wife had numerous grandchildren, and when the waters began to retreat to the level of the plain, the most audacious wanted to go forth and explore the mountain’s surroundings.

  “The family, however, ever prudent, decided to wait longer. What your Biblical history of the Earth does not relate, however, is that in addition to them, there was a poor devil of a servant, with his wife and children, who might be thought of as Noah’s concierge—and when there were too many mouths to feed on the mountain, he decided to take his family away in order to try to establish them on the plain, in spite of all the prayers and objurgations of his master’s family.

  “Noah’s wife then put some provisions in a basket for him and his family, and they went down into the plain.

  “At first, all went well, and after having built a raft, they were able to sail from one dry place to another, and finally to cultivate the ground on hillocks of a sort, for three generations. Little by little, however, the waters rose again, and his descendants lived for another three generations, at first spending three-quarters of their time and then almost all of it in the water, thus becoming, albeit reluctantly, almost amphibious.

  “One day, however, the waters rose and all our villages—populated by six prolific generations, as in the virtuous times of the patriarchs, when no one yet knew how to give short weight—were swallowed up.

  “Miraculously, though, as they had been long accustomed to spending most of their time in the water, everyone perished except for one young couple who had been married for exactly three weeks. They were able to adapt themselves to that new way of life, and did not take long to constitute, after four generations, a true city in the depths of the mysterious grottoes of the sea-bed.

  “They did not take long to spread out via the Red Sea over the bed of all the Oceans and to populate them. They were our venerable ancestors…”

  At this point, the electric ball rang, for the worthy Captain Jacob Laquedem had been unable to prevent himself interrupting the man of the sea’s story, to exclaim in his turn: “That’s wonderful!”—in aquatic Hebrew, of course.

  He did not have to wait long for the response.

  “Not as wonderful as all that, for according to what we have read in your books, collected from the wrecks that reach us, we believe that your first historians—including Sanchuniathon,34 for example—declared that the first humans, and the Egyptians themselves, were descended from fish.”

  “That’s true. Buy why don’t you come to see us as the earth’s surface?”

  “Simply because it’s impossible for us to do so. Firstly, we have no means of coming up to the surface of the waters, and even if one of us wanted to hoist himself up by means of your probe—the first that we have seen in the depths of our 9429.11-meter valley—he would not take long, not merely to perish, but to leap like a rabbit, as your novels put it.

  “In the approximately 4900 years that our arch-white race has been living in the Ocean depths it has been gradually modified, according to the great universal law of adaptation, and—although we aren’t hunc
hbacks, believe me—in order to live and breathe we each have a little pouch on our back, containing air compressed to three or four hundred atmospheres, according to the depth. If we were in the air above the water, or even before then, our pouches would burst with a thunderous noise and we would be blasted into little pieces.

  “But you, with a heavy weight and an abundant provision of compressed air in an apparatus that you could bring down with you, could come to see us. Then, for sure, there would be a great celebration in our submarine dwellings to welcome you.”

  “That’s worth investigation—but first, I’ll have to return to Paris in France…”

  “We know your country by reputation; we have a little bronze Eiffel Tower here, which was found inside a shipwrecked trunk…”

  “That’s marvelous. Yes, when I return to France to translate this conversation exactly with my friend Vibert, afterwards, if he wishes, we’ll come back here and try to come down to you together.”

  “Agreed. We’ll wait for you with keen impatience.”

  The following year, almost to the day, Captain Jacob and I were on our ship in the middle of the Pacific, above the Aldrich Trench, getting ready to make our descent—and it’s the story of our voyage of 9429.113 meters to the Ocean bed that I shall have the honor of telling you in the next chapter.

  IV. Our descent into the Pacific depths. A new race.

  Our preparations for the descent were neither long nor complicated, because we had spent a long time planning our attempt and preparing for its execution.

  We did not hide the fact that we had a considerable chance of losing our lives in the endeavor. If the cable were to break or the air-supply to be interrupted for five minutes, we would be well and truly dead. But what do you expect? Although we were no braver than anyone else, we were carried away by curiosity.

  We had, therefore, prepared two solid steel cables, coated with a thick layer of Surinam quassia35 to deter whales desirous of cutting our communications while playing with them. Each of us also had, instead of large cannonballs on our feet, an enormous, exceedingly heavy and resistant tube, similarly made of fine steel, coiled to boot, to retain and to equalize the pressure on the walls of air molecules obedient to centrifugal force, simply enclosing air compressed to 500 atmospheres, with the appropriate dose of sodium peroxide.36 Each of us had two of these, one on each foot, which would provide us with air for a fortnight. We did not expect to remain with our new friends for as long as that. Finally, by means of a set of valves, appropriately combined and graduated, we only had to put a little tube around our heads to our mouths, when necessary, in order to breathe freely. It had been necessary to organize this system because there was no possibility of sending air down to such depths from our boat by means of a pump.

  We were warmly dressed in furs within our diving-suits, to avoid the cold and damp, although our excellent unknown friend that it was neither cold not hot, but only cool, in the eternal night of the profound depths. It is true that the submarine humans possessed electricity and phosphorescent light, but in the meantime, we attached wires for the telephone and an electric lamp to each of our cables, to unroll solely as we descended.

  Thus ballasted, when the great moment arrived, after having embraced all our sailors, who were weeping like calves, we sealed ourselves in our diving-suits and our tube-feet, and the immersion commenced, slowly at first.

  Curious as we were, we must confess that at first we experienced a series of sensations singularly reminiscent of bad stage-fright. Gradually, however, we got used to it, and after half an hour, we telephoned to ask for the descent to be accelerated slightly.

  Strangely enough, at that moment some kind of seal passed close to us, pronouncing very distinctly: Papa. Who could have taught it to do that? It’s a mystery that we were never able to solve, although we formulated a considerable number of hypotheses.

  We continue to descend vertically into the black darkness, sweating, but not too badly, without skidding. We had an acoustic trumpet with which to talk to one another, and we were, as they say, beginning to get a grip on the hair of the beast.

  At one moment, a powerful shock made Captain Jacob Laquedem afraid that he might lose his precious tubes; fortunately, that did not happen.

  Curiously enough, the further we descended the lighter we felt. Evidently, the pressure between the inferior and superior layers was beginning to equilibrate.

  Finally, after four hours twenty-two minutes of descent—a century!—we touched the bottom of the famous trench, more than 9429 meters beneath the surface of the water and, in consequence, our ship.

  Our unknown friends were there to greet us, and at first we were dazzled by all the lights surrounding us.

  One problem had occurred to us on the way: how would we be able to live on the sea-bed? It would be impossible for us to come out of our diving-suits. Our friends, however, forewarned in advance of our descent and our visit, had thought of everything. We had hardly set foot on the fine sand with our tubes when our cables, detached by expert hands, were solidly attached to a crampon fixed in a granite wall, and we were drawn gently through a series of corridors that were closed off by means of automatic doors, into a vast grotto, superbly lit and absolutely watertight.

  For us that was salvation, and we were able to emerge from our diving-suits while retaining our respiratory tubes.

  When our hosts could see us and touch us, they uttered cries of joy and astonishment, and when we looked at them, we were no more able to hide our surprise, so different from us did these kindred, separated from us since the Deluge—which is to say, for about 4900 years—and living nearly ten thousand meters deep on the Ocean bed, appear.

  Imagine…

  Author’s note: Since our descent, the problem of air-purification has finally been solved. This is what the Suni for September 27, 1900 said:

  “The recent experiments of Messieurs Desgresz and Balthazard37 regarding chemical means of purifying an atmosphere in a hermetically sealed environment are of ‘vital’ interest to the innumerable victims of ‘investment properties.’ Divers who explore the ocean bed and the future crews of submarine boats will have reason to bless this regenerative chemistry.

  “The problem is simple: it is necessary to get rid of the carbon dioxide emitted by the breathing lungs and to restore the oxygen that pulmonary consumption removes.

  “A providential substance has been found that enjoys this double virtue: it is sodium peroxide—or, if you prefer, superoxygenated soda. Take a piece of sodium peroxide and put it in contact with water, without heating it, at room temperature; oxygen will be given off, leaving a sodium oxide residue that is capable of absorbing carbon dioxide and combining with it to form a carbonate. The exhausted air is reconstituted.

  “In Professor Bouchard’s laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine, Messieurs Desgresz and Balthazard have succeeded in keeping animals alive in a sealed jar for hours, by deploying appropriate quantities of sodium peroxide. The substance is a powerful oxidant which, moreover, burns and destroys the poisons with which the expired gas is impregnated.

  “Our experimenters wanted to apply the method to human respiration, and addressed themselves for that purpose to users of driving-suits. Present users of diving-suits are only provided with the air necessary to their underwater excursions with considerable difficulty, by means of a special pumps operated from a boat. With sodium peroxide, pumps are no longer necessary.

  Messieurs Desgresz and Balthazard’s diver will carry with him, so to speak, air-tablets, which will be contained in an ad hoc apparatus and will ‘react’ as necessary.

  “This is the principle of the apparatus:

  “A prismatic steel box is divided into compartments by superimposed horizontal shelves, each of which carries a supply of sodium peroxide. A clockwork mechanism, tips up the successive shelves at regular intervals, calculated according to the respiratory activity. At each stroke, the peroxide falls into another box containing water, and the chemic
al reaction proceeds, bringing about the absorption of carbon dioxide and the exhalation of ‘new’ oxygen.

  “A little ventilator, activated by the electricity of a battery, provokes a continuous circulation of the vitiated air and the regenerated air within the apparatus and in the enclosed space that constitutes the diver’s ‘armature.’ The good air is incessantly delivered within range of his mouth.

  “The upper part of the body is isolated in a hermetically-sealed garment with the regenerative apparatus. The entire system only weights twelve kilos, and the volume of circulating air is scarcely five liters, but five liters constantly renewed, like the Wandering Jew’s five sous, with only two hundred grams of peroxide for an hour’s work.”

  For its part, the Aurore published the following note on November 3 of the same year:

  “It is well-known that an animal enclosed in a confined space ends up dying of asphyxia after a certain time by virtue of the disappearance from the atmosphere of the oxygen used in respiration and replaced by carbon dioxide. This phenomenon is even more rapid in humans. Thus, one must ensure the renewal of air in every instance in which a human is enclosed in a sealed environment—which are numerous.

  “Scientists have been searching for some time for a substance capable of regenerating vitiated air by destroying the carbon dioxide it contains and restoring the oxygen.

  “A few weeks ago, the Académie des Science received a note from two French scientists, which announced that they had solved the problem. The substance that they used was sodium peroxide.

  “Monsieur Jobert38 has claimed priority of the invention, which he described in a sealed submission deposited on April 28, 1898. Sodium peroxide fixes atmospheric carbon dioxide and replaces it with oxygen. In a new note, Monsieur Jobert announces that he has found industrial applications for his discovery.”