“Troth!” said Rory at dinner that day, “will you fellows never have done eating? It’s myself that is longing to get away down to the bottom of the sea.”
The four of them entered the band-box—Allan, Ralph, the doctor, and Rory; then they were slowly lowered down—down—down amid a darkness that could be felt. But presently a green glimmer of light shone in through the strong window of the bell; they could see each other’s faces. The light got stronger and stronger as the electric ball came nearer and nearer, till at last it stopped stationary about twelve yards from their window, making the sea all round, beneath, and above it as bright as noon.
“Yonder is the stage, boys,” cried Rory; “but where are the performers?”
They had not long to wait for these. Fish, first of the smaller kinds, came sailing round the light; presently these fled in all directions, and a monster shark took up the room. He soon had company, for dozens of others came floating around, and not sharks only, but creatures of more hideous forms than anything even Rory could have imagined in his wildest dreams.
“Oh!” cried the young poet, “if Gustave Doré were only here to see this terrible sight!”
“It beats,” said Sandy, “the Brighton Aquarium all to pieces. Oh?” he screamed, shrinking into a corner of the band-box, as a huge hammer-headed shark sidled up to the window, crooked his awful eyes, and stared in. “Oh, Rory, man, signal quick! I want to get up out o’ here. No more divin’-bells for me, lad.”
For nearly six weeks it became the regular custom to visit this submarine vivarium every night after dinner.
“It was just as good,” Ralph and Allan said, “as going to a show.”
“And a deal better,” added Rory. Even the mates and the crew begged for a peep at the wonders displayed in the depths of the illuminated sea.
“Well,” said Ted Wilson, when he ascended after his first view, “I’m a sadder and a wiser man, and I’ll dream of what I’ve seen this night as long as ever I live.”