"But the air inside the bell—" Cosmo began.
"Excuse me," interrupted De Beauxchamps, "but that air need be under no greater pressure than at the surface. I shall know how to provide for that. Remember the Jules Verne. Simply give me carte blanche in this matter, let me have the materials to work with, afford me the advantage of your advice and assistance whenever I shall need them, and I promise you that by the time we have arrived over the site of New York we shall be prepared for the descent."
Cosmo was deeply impressed by the Frenchman's enthusiastic self-confidence. He had a great admiration for the constructor of the Jules Verne, and, besides, the proposed adventure was exactly after his own heart. After meditating a while, he said heartily:
"Well, M. De Beauxchamps, I give my consent. Everything you wish shall be at your disposal, and you can begin as soon as you choose. Only, let the thing be kept a secret between us and the workmen who are employed. If it should turn out a failure it would not do that the people in the Ark should be aware of it. I can give you a working room on one of the lower decks, where there will be no interference with your proceedings, and no knowledge of what you are about can leak out."
"That is exactly what I should wish," returned De Beauxchamps, smiling with delight, "and I renew my promise that you shall not be disappointed."
So, without a suspicion of what was going on entering the minds of any person in the great company outside the small company of men who were actually employed in the work, the construction of De Beauxchamps's great diving-bell was begun, and pushed with all possible speed, consistent with the proper execution of the work. In the meantime the Ark continued its course toward the west.
They ran slowly, for there was no hurry, and the Ark had now become to its inhabitants as a house and a home—their only foothold on the whole round earth, and that but a little floating island of buoyant metal. They crossed the Pamirs and the Hindu-Kush, the place where the Caspian Sea had been swallowed up in the universal ocean, and ran over Ararat, which three months before had put them into such fearful danger, but whose loftiest summit now lay twelve thousand feet beneath their keel.
At length, after many excursions toward the north and toward the south, in the halcyon weather that had seldom failed since the withdrawal of the nebula, they arrived at the place (or above it) which had stood during centuries for a noon-mark on the globe.
It was midday when Captain Arms, having made his observations, said to
Cosmo and the others on the bridge:
"Noon at Greenwich, and noon on the Ark. Latitude, fifty-one degrees thirty minutes. That brings you as nearly plumb over the place as you'd be likely to hit it. Right down there lies the old observatory that set the chronometers of the world, and kept the clocks and watches up to their work."