Lower than they had ever gone before the boys realized they were dropping, until finally the electric lights were switched on, and looking eagerly out through the observation search ports they could catch their first glimpse of the vast world that lay at the bottom of the ocean.
CHAPTER VII
WONDERFUL UNDER-THE-SEA SIGHTS
The submarine was moving slowly forward, so that they were being treated to a constant change of scene. It was like a vast panorama being unrolled before their eyes, and for their especial benefit. The three boys clung to their ports of observation, and continued to gaze at the marvelous sights as though fascinated.
They could see as plainly as though looking into one of those aquarium tanks with the glass sides, where all manner of curious fish swim idly back and forth, and rub their noses vainly against the transparent barrier.
“Such gloriously colored fish I never saw before!” Ballyhoo was saying, and the others could easily echo his words, for they discovered some new object of interest with almost each passing minute.
Sometimes these denizens of the depths were of a brilliant scarlet hue; then again they seemed to possess most of the colors of the rainbow, delicately shaded. Others had long waving tails, and often the boys would discover some ugly looking monster that seemed quite out of place in such splendid surroundings, like an ogre at a feast of fairies.
“There, I saw a shark swing past!” exclaimed Ballyhoo, later on, perhaps with an odd shiver passing over him, for sharks always brought up that little adventure of his.
Jack had already commenced to arrange his camera. Before now he had tried it for height, and hence knew just how to proceed so as to get the proper results.
“Some of these things seem too fine to be lost,” he told Oscar, who had his station close beside him. “And as we sink a little lower I begin to notice those waving fields of submarine flowers, or weeds, or plants, whatever you can call them. Any time now we’re apt to run into a field that I’d like to get a picture of.”
Oscar said nothing to discourage him. In fact, he, too, felt that it was high time they were remembering that the main object of their coming to this part of the Caribbean Sea had been to secure wonderful pictures of the ocean depths and its denizens, rather than to share in the treasure that was the magnet drawing Captain Shooks.