The sea horror

It is only now, when we know all the story, that we see at last how narrow was our escape, that we understand at last the power and the dread of that dark horror that rose to whelm an unsuspecting world. From the first sailing of the Clinton expedition to that last flaming hour of tremendous combat when the destiny of a planet was settled forever, we can follow the thing now, and can recognize what vast and unseen forces they were that wove around our world the net of a terrible doom. For it is only now, when the horror has passed over us, that we can understand that horror from its beginning.
It is with Clinton himself that the beginning lies, and with the expedition which bore his name. Dr. Herbert Clinton, holder of the chair of marine zoology at the University of London, was generally conceded to be the foremost expert on deep-sea life in all the British Isles. For a score of years, indeed, his fame had risen steadily as a result of his additions to scientific knowledge. He had been the one to prove first the connection between the absence of ultra-violet rays and the strange phosphorescence of certain forms of bathic life. He had, in his famous Indian Ocean trawlings, established the significance of the quantities of foraminiferal ooze found on the scarps of that sea's bottom. And he it was who had annihilated for all time the long-disputed Kempner-Stoll theory by his brilliant new classification of ascidian forms.
Even to the general public the slender, gray-haired scientist with the keen gray eyes was a well-known figure, for it was his famous investigations into the forms of deep-sea creatures which had made possible the building of the new K-type submarines. These submarines, which had now been adopted by practically all nations, were built upon a new pressure-resistance principle evolved by Dr. Clinton from his investigations, and could venture to depths and pressures impossible to the under-sea boats of war and post-war types. Some of them, indeed, had descended to depths of a mile and more without experiencing injury, and it was Clinton's contention that they were in reality capable of depths of three miles and more. To many, at first, that contention seemed only a somewhat boastful exaggeration on his part, but when the announcement of the Clinton expedition made it known that one of these submarines was to be used by that enterprise, the scientist's sincerity was conceded.