wherever search is to be made, or work
performed. Many of the present details,
however, may be considered as not final, but
as temporary arrangements; for, almost every
day suggests improvements in an invention
which is at once so novel and so bold. The
grand principle alone must remain unchanged.

You will not suppose that the cabin of the
Auguste (for it has only a single apartment)
is a very luxurious retreat; that it is panelled
with mahogany and looking-glass, hung with
festoons of muslins and silk, or strewn with
cushions of velvet padded with down. The
first submarine boat is as far from the thought
of such superfluities, as was the first surface-
going steamer. It is of no use calling for the
steward to bring you an ice, a pint of
Champagne, or a new-laid egg warranted never to
have known the touch of terra firma; nor are
you put to the inconvenience of puzzling
your brains as to which of the Waverley
novels you shall take down from their stylish
bookcase. In the first steamer, the stoker's
apartment would be the place of honour, and
perhaps almost the only place; on board the
Auguste, the wind man's and the bellows
man's cabinet is everything— quarter-deck,
fore-cabin, aft-cabin, state-room, kitchen and
all. You find yourself in a low apartment in
which you cannot stand upright after the
awful upper trap-door is closed; but, that
does not matter, because you have not time
to be cramped, and, as soon as you get to the
bottom, you open the trap in the floor, cause
the waters to retreat by the force of your
condensed air, and find yourself standing on
the actual bed of the sea— on rock, or sand,
or shingle, or whatever else it may be. The
walls, too, are iron, and round them runs a
low divan, likewise of iron, on which the
company seat themselves until they commence
their aquatic labours— their water-works, if
I may so denominate them. The only
decorations observable, are sundry screws and
cocks and pump-handles and pipes,  the
necessary agents for the manoeuvre of the
vessel; the only furniture, a pailful of thick
creamy whitewash, and a large pair of
bellows.

Be it remembered that we, Bateau Plongeur,
and all, are on the surface. The men are
now ready, and put off from the shore in
another boat. Like miners, they have changed
their usual dress for coarse, shabby clothing,
more suitable to the bottom of the sea. We
get out of the hole, and into our boat; while
they leave their bark (in which a tenth man
remains), and prepare to drop, one by one,
through the trou d'homme, into the hollow
entrails of the red-shelled and cannibal
Auguste. I marvel to behold them:

"Alas! regardless of their doom
The little victims play!"

That is to say, they laugh, and seem to
care no more about the matter than if they
were going down into a wine-cellar, to fetch
a bottle of Bordeaux a-piece for their own
private drinking. There is no symptom of
any horrible drownings, after the fashion of
Nantes, being either designed or anticipated:
nor, have they the look of those desperate
men who habitually risk life to gain a livelihood,
and who exist in the constant consciousness
that they are so risking it. I could not
observe in any one of them the aëronaut's
expression of countenance.

Well; these nine sane and healthy men
voluntarily entered their iron floating den,
without grimace or trembling; and— it
made me gasp— their foreman (a sleek-
skinned, jolly-looking fellow, with a straw-
coloured military chin-beard),  shut the
trap-door with a hearty slam. There they
were, and no mistake, unless some legerdemain
trick had been played, as when the
conjuror puts your watch into his mortar,
and afterwards pounds a watch to pieces.
And now we learn the use of the potence,
the gallows and pulley. The tenth man
outside clenches the foreman's slam of the trap-
door, by hauling it even more tightly up,
which he does by fastening the rope of the
pulley to a ring on the door. When he has
done his best, he quietly sits down upon the
shell of the Auguste. And then you hear a
rapping, and a tapping, and a hammering
inside. What is it ? They are absolutely
screwing and bolting themselves in; or rather,
they are screwing and bolting the water out:
for water is a terribly violent housebreaker,
when you have twenty or thirty feet of it
above the highest ridge of your roof. And
now they have finished. A few knocks are
given to warn the tenth man to jump off
Behemoth's back, unless he has a mind to go
to the bottom too. He kneels down, peeps
into one of the spider's eyes, knocks in
answer, shouts a few words which seem to
be audible within— for a muffled groan is
heard in reply— jumps into his boat, and goes
ashore. His part of the performance is
played; he may now go home to breakfast.
We, however, continue to linger at hand in
our skiff, to observe the disappearance of the
Auguste as closely as possible. The men are
working away at the pumps, taking in water
as fast as they can: she will soon vanish.

It has been already stated that the Diving
Boat, composed entirely of iron, floats by
means of the compressed air contained in the
reservoir at each end, aided by the air in the
central chamber. If that compressed air is
still further diminished in bulk, after the hold
has been made safe and water-tight, it is clear
that the specific gravity of the whole machine
will be altered till it sinks. Accordingly, into
these air reservoirs, the imprisoned men inject
water by means of a forcing pump, until they
have thus taken in as much additional ballast
as suffices to sink them. It is the principle
of ballooning applied to the ocean, instead of
to the atmosphere.

Dr. Payerne obligingly pointed out that