The men in the control-room look at each other....
It is a ridiculous situation, to be sinking in this confounded silence into the Unknown and not to be able to see anything but the everlasting backward jerking of that treacherous hand on the white dial....
In the conning-tower it is no different. I glance distractedly backwards and forwards from the map to the gauge.
Meanwhile the boat sinks deeper and deeper; 24 fathoms have gone by.... The hand is moving towards 27.... I am just thinking that the deeps of Chesapeake Bay must come to an end somewhere, and that we can hardly be sinking into groundlessness ... when suddenly, without the least shock, the boat comes to a halt at a depth of 27½ fathoms.
I scrambled down to the control-room and took counsel with Klees and the two officers of the watch.
It could only be that we had struck a hole which was not marked on the map. Well, this was nothing serious, after all. Whether we had to rise from 16 or 27 fathoms was quite immaterial.
I was just about to give the order to rise to the surface, when my glance fell on the gyro-compass, which with its slowly jerking black and white disc hangs usually so serenely in its case, which is lit up from the inside....
I fell back in surprise....
What on earth had come over it? The disc of the compass had gone quite mad and was turning round and round with short jerky movements....
The affair began to grow distinctly uncomfortable. Considering that our gyro-compasses are about the most reliable of any in the whole world, and as at a depth of 27 fathoms in Chesapeake Bay the earth could hardly be revolving round us, there was only one conclusion to be drawn, and that a confoundedly unpleasant one.... We must be turning round and round in our hole, for what reason the devil only knew!