"Gazing through the little port-holes in the control room, Dr. Lewis, Captain Evans, the submarine's commander, and I watched the sunlit waters outside darkening as we sank downward. In those waters there turned and flashed the shoals of surface fishes, but as we dropped on, these disappeared, giving way to other forms that we could but vaguely make out in the darkening waters. By the time the bathometric dial registered five hundred feet the darkness about us was all but absolute, and a word of command turned on the great under-sea searchlights, from which long lanes of golden light cut out through the gloom about us.
"Still down we sank, in that great spiral course, until we had reached a thousand feet, two thousand, a mile, a mile and a half. Now and then we glimpsed great sea-creatures that blundered into the glow of our lights, cephalopods and gasteropods, and now and then one of the larger deep-sea crustaceans. Most of these, however, seemed to flee from the brilliance of our lights, though in one case we caught sight of a long, snaky form that could only have belonged to the hydrophis family, though it was of unprecedented thickness and length.
"The dial now registered a two-mile depth, and we snapped off the submarine's lights, for in the waters about us were glowing the phosphorescent creatures that lurk in these great depths. Floating by in the darkness went here and there a Brisinga elegans, or luminous starfish, its nineteen long tentacles glowing with misty light. The snakelike stomias boa flashed past, the double rows of luminous disks on the sides of its long body adding to the phosphorescent brilliance. We made out, too, a squat, flat creature fully fifteen feet in length, with great fanged mouth and luminous tail and fins, quite unknown to the science of zoology, while scores of the rare malacosteus niger, with its two headspots of greenish-gold light, could be seen around us. Then, as we sank still farther downward, the glowing phosphorescent forms about us thinned and vanished, while about us lay a dark and almost lifeless region of waters.
"I turned to order the lights snapped on again, but stopped short at a sudden cry from Lewis, at the port-hole beside me. He could not speak, only pointing down in utmost excitement through the glass, and as I too gazed down, awe and astonishment fell on me. For glimmering up toward us from far below, through the dark waters, was a faint white light, a strange, cold radiance that was growing rapidly stronger as we dropped down toward it. In stunned silence we watched, as our craft dipped down, and now at last we began to see its source.
"A thousand feet below us there stretched an unimaginable scene. It was the ocean's floor, a level, somewhat rolling plain, and on it, within this vast region of white radiance, were grouped scores, hundreds, thousands of strange structures, great globes of shining metal, pierced by doorways, which were of uniform size, each being fully three hundred feet in diameter. They were ranged in long streets or avenues with mathematical precision. Away into the distance as far as the eye could reach stretched this mighty city of globes, and I saw that on the top of each globe was a small squat mechanism, like that which our trawl had brought up but larger, and while these mechanisms were not themselves luminous or shining, there sprang from them in some way rays of white light which made it plain that it was these which produced the strange white light that bathed all this gigantic city.
"Our craft was slanting downward, toward and across the city as we watched in awe, and as it did so we made out two things. The first was that far away there was a spot at the city's heart where were no globes, a vast, smooth-walled pit that seemed to sink down into the sea's floor for an unguessable distance, and which I judged was fully two miles in diameter. Near its edge there soared up above the globes of the city, for fully two thousand feet, a slender tower of the same shining metal, at whose tip was a small, bulb-like room. I seemed to see, also, vague, great shapes that moved about this tower, but at that moment my attention was shifted suddenly by Lewis' exclamation to the city beneath us, and I saw for the first time the people of that city.
"Through the streets, but a few hundred feet below us, now, there moved countless numbers of black forms, creeping along the smooth, metal-paved avenues like great black slugs. And as we dropped closer toward them we saw that that was what they were—great slug-people, their bodies thick cylinders of dark flesh, perhaps eight feet in length and three in thickness, on which they crawled forward like giant worm-things, their only limbs two short, thick flippers near the head, their only sense-organs that we could see being two great, dark, shining eyes like the eyes of an octopus—great slug-creatures, inhabitants of the waters here at the sea's bottom, crawling through this strange and awful city whose existence men have never dreamed—a city at the bottom of the sea, a city glowing with white, unearthly radiance, a city peopled by unhuman creatures, but reared into being by more than human power!
"We stared down upon it, in indescribable awe and wonder, and then Evans, the commander, uttered a sudden exclamation. A group of the strange slug-creatures had collected in the street just below us, gazing up through the waters toward us with their strange, dark eyes, and now we saw that across the city toward us was striding an erect, gigantic shape. It came from the direction of the great pit and tower, where there could be glimpsed others like it—an erect, vast shape of metal, striding toward us on two mighty limbs or columns which must have measured a thousand feet in height, and which supported at their top a small disk-platform on which were grouped two or three of the slug-creatures, operating their vast mechanism. From below this platform, too, there projected a great jointed limb, or arm, of almost the same length as the two great legs, and as the vast thing strode toward us over the city of globes this mighty arm was reaching out toward our craft.
"I uttered a shout, and heard a hoarse order from Evans shouted through the speaking-tube, and a moment later the submarine shot upward with all the power of its motors. But as it did so there came a jarring shock and clash of metal, and then our craft was pulled downward, its propellers spinning in vain. The great upraised arm of the giant striding machine had gripped us and held us as a child might hold a toy.