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474
ufin
At first, I hardly noticed the grotesque shapes of the formation within the chamber and along the walls. The amazing color was all I could perceive —not just an ordinary shade, but an incredibly alive blue that seemed to embrace all the various conceivable shadings of that one color. Wherever I looked my eyes met gradations of blue, ranging from azure to hues merging almost into black. The water was blue; the walls were blue; even my hands, as I held them before my goggle-eyed diving helmet, were blue.
I moved carefully about the chamber, peering into some of the openings that led off from the room in which I stood. From one dark hole I drew back sharply, as my quick glance revealed a mass of huge crawling creatures.
They were great spider crabs with arms nearly nine feet in length, and huge octopi with their quivering tentacles writhing about frenziedly — and the cold feeling of menace that emanated from them sent a shudder along my spine. Hurriedly, I backed away and didn't stop until I was completely out of the structure.
I had stayed too long. The feeling of pressure was like being pinched between the thumb and forefinger of some huge giant. I jerked my signal cord, and soon I was being gently raised up — up out of the city of the dead.
BY this time, I had come to the realization that I had actually discovered the remains of what was once the richest and wickedest city on the entire Spanish Main. There could be no doubt but that I had seen what no other living man had gazed upon
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— sunken Port Royal!
Here was an undiscovered and unexplored realm — a marvelous world, strange yet beautiful, touched with mystery. Here was a find of scientific import, and I had come upon it by mere chance.
As I rose slowly to the surface my mind was afire with the possibilities I had uncovered. If I could go to deeper depths; if I could follow that sloping sandy seaway, what strange sights might I see! And don't overlook the possible recovery of some of the vast riches which the sea had claimed when the great deluge of 1692, followed by the earthquake, had driven the "Pirate's Babylon" from the world of living men!
Since that time, I have dreamed of what a man might find on the floor of the Caribbean in outer Kingston Harbor — if he could devise some means of penetrating into the pressure-packed depths. Such means require improved diving gear to lessen the hazards that are constant companions of a man in regulation diving dress at such depths.
The ways and means of this achievement have now been found, for a new-type diving robot has ac tually been devised, and is in course of construction.
Soon I shall return to the Caribbean, and the "city beneath the sea" — Port Royal. I shall prod into its secrets, disturb the spider crabs, the giant octopi and other strange and weird denizens which alone inhabit it, seeking to wrest away some of its vast riches which were sent to the bottom on that ill fated night in 1692.
Adventure calls.'
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