“Aye, aye, skipper,” Bud replied.
“We’re heading directly to the X marks on our chart. We should be there before too long.”
As the Sea Dart skimmed along slightly below the 123
124 TOM SWIFT AND HIS JETMARINE
surface, Tom found time to explain certain things to his friend which he had not mentioned before.
“We’ve built all the features of the Barton bathysphere into this craft,” he said.
“Beebe first used it in 1934 to go down three thousand feet. And we applied the principles of the benthoscope that Barton used to descend forty-five hundred feet in 1949.”
“But they weren’t submarines,” Bud commented.
Tom smiled. “That’s right. Even though our task is more difficult, we’ll still go down farther!”
“That’s a bit over my head,” Bud joked. Then he added, “What’s all that strange-looking gear up in the bow, Tom?”
“Sorry I didn’t have time to explain it to you, old man,” Tom replied. “It belongs to a friend of Dad’s -an oceanographer who asked me to do some research for his society.”
“Sounds kind of highbrow,” Bud returned.
“Not at all. They’re just a group of hardheaded scientists who want facts and I propose to bring back a bushel.”
“No oysters?”
“Another crack like that and I’ll lay you right on the half shell,” Tom said. “But seriously, that metal case you saw forward is a deep-water camera. The contraptions on the side are connected to the suction nets that are rigged outside the hull.”
“Suction nets?” Bud looked incredulous. “I thought they were intake ports.”
“In a way they are,” Tom explained. “In them I hope to catch the fast underwater species of deep-sea