![]() And it had need to be, for presently a man was to crawl in through that glass manhole, to be screwed up tightly, and to be flung overboard, and to sink down-down-down, for five miles, even as the lieutenant said. It was so elaborately padded that a man might have been fired from a gun in it with perfect safety. ![]() Everything was elaborately padded, even the Myers apparatus which was to absorb carbonic acid and replace the oxygen inspired by its tenant, when he had crept in by the glass manhole, and had been screwed in. It was elaborately padded with air cushions, with little studs sunk between bulging pillows to work the simple mechanism of the affair. Both the men had seen the interior of this globe for the first time that morning. In two places, one above the other, the steel gave place to a couple of circular windows of enormously thick glass, and one of these, set in a steel frame of great solidity, was now partially unscrewed. It was elaborately nested in a monstrous scaffolding built into the framework of the vessel, and the gigantic spars that were presently to sling it overboard gave the stern of the ship an appearance that had raised the curiosity of every decent sailor who had sighted it, from the Pool of London to the Tropic of Capricorn. It looked like the shot for some Titanic piece of artillery. The object of their conversation was a huge ball of steel, having an exterior diameter of ​perhaps nine feet. The lieutenant made no answer, but resumed his pine splinter. "Sounds a lot," said Steevens, "but it's jolly thick steel." ![]() And the ocean where he's going is five miles deep. "At the surface of the water it's fourteen pounds to the inch, thirty feet down it's double that sixty, treble ninety, four times nine hundred, forty times five thousand, three hundred-that's a mile-it's two hundred and forty times fourteen pounds that's-let's see-thirty hundredweight-a ton and a half, Steevens a ton and a half to the square inch. ![]() "But think of the pressure," said the lieutenant. "He seems to have calculated it all out pretty well," said Steevens, still impartial. "I believe it will smash-flat," said the lieutenant. "It's an idea," said Steevens, in the tone of one who keeps an open mind. "What do you think of it, Steevens?" he asked. THE lieutenant stood in front of the steel sphere and gnawed a piece of pine splinter. ![]()
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