far below the ordinary level.
The liquid medium was more obscure, but the limpidity of these
transparent waters still allowed the light to penetrate sufficiently
for Benito to distinguish the objects scattered on the bed of the
river, and to approach them with some safety. Besides, the sand,
sprinkled with mica flakes, seemed to form a sort of reflector, and
the very grains could be counted glittering like luminous dust.
Benito moved on, examining and sounding the smallest cavities with
his spear. He continued to advance very slowly; the communication
cord was paid out, and as the pipes which served for the inlet and
outlet of the air were never tightened, the pump was worked under the
proper conditions.
Benito turned off so as to reach the middle of the bed of the Amazon,
where there was the greatest depression. Sometimes profound obscurity
thickened around him, and then he could see nothing, so feeble was
the light; but this was a purely passing phenomenon, and due to the
raft, which, floating above his head, intercepted the solar rays and
made the night replace the day. An instant afterward the huge shadow
would be dissipated, and the reflection of the sands appear again in
full force.
All the time Benito was going deeper. He felt the increase of the
pressure with which his body was wrapped by the liquid mass. His
respiration became less easy; the retractibility of his organs no
longer worked with as much ease as in the midst of an atmosphere more
conveniently adapted for them. And so he found himself under the
action of physiological effects to which he was unaccustomed. The
rumbling grew louder in his ears, but as his thought was always
lucid, as he felt that the action of his brain was quite clear–even
a little more so than usual–he delayed giving the signal for return,
and continued to go down deeper still.
Suddenly, in the subdued light which surrounded him, his attention
was attracted by a confused mass. It seemed to take the form of a
corpse, entangled beneath a clump of aquatic plants. Intense
excitement seized him. He stepped toward the mass; with his spear he
felt it. It was the carcass of a huge cayman, already reduced to a
skeleton, and which the current of the Rio Negro had swept into the
bed of the Amazon. Benito recoiled, and, in spite of the assertions
of the pilot, the thought recurred to him that some living cayman
might even then be met with in the deeps near the Bar of Frias!
But he repelled the idea, and continued his progress, so as to reach
the bottom of the depression.
And now he had arrived at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet,
and consequently was experiencing a pressure of three atmospheres.
If, then, this cavity was also drawn blank, he would have to suspend
his researches.
Experience has shown that the extreme limit for such submarine
explorations lies between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and
thirty feet, and that below this there is great danger, the human
organism not only being hindered from performing his functions under
such a pressure, but the apparatus failing to keep up a sufficient
supply of air with the desirable regularity.
But Benito was resolved to go as far as his mental powers and
physical energies would let him. By some strange presentiment he was
drawn toward this abyss; it seemed to him as though the corpse was
very likely to have rolled to the bottom of the hole, and that
Torres, if he had any heavy things about him, such as a belt
containing either money or arms, would have sunk to the very lowest
point. Of a sudden, in a deep hollow, he saw a body through the
gloom! Yes! A corpse, still clothed, stretched out like a man asleep,
with his arms folded under his head!
Was that Torres? In the obscurity, then very dense, he found it
difficult to see; but it was a human body that lay there, less than
ten paces off, and perfectly motionless!
A sharp pang shot through Benito. His heart, for an instant, ceased
to beat. He thought he was going to lose consciousness. By a supreme