The descent began at 1.25 p.m., and the chamber, dragged down by its reservoirs filled with water, disappeared under the surface of the ocean.

The emotion of the officers and sailors on board was now divided between the prisoners in the projectile and the prisoners of the submarine apparatus.  These latter forgot themselves, and, glued to the panes of the port-lights, they attentively observed the liquid masses they were passing through.

The descent was rapid.  At 2.17 p.m.  J.T.  Maston and his companions had reached the bottom of the Pacific; but they saw nothing except the arid desert which neither marine flora nor fauna any longer animated.  By the light of their lamps, furnished with powerful reflectors, they could observe the dark layers of water in a rather large radius, but the projectile remained invisible in their eyes.

The impatience of these bold divers could hardly be described.  Their apparatus being in electric communication with the corvette, they made a signal agreed upon, and the Susquehanna carried their chamber over a mile of space at one yard from the soil.

They thus explored all the submarine plain, deceived at every instant by optical delusions which cut them to the heart.  Here a rock, there a swelling of the ground, looked to them like the much-sought-for projectile; then they would soon find out their error and despair again.

“Where are they?  Where can they be?” cried J.T.  Maston.

And the poor man called aloud to Nicholl, Barbicane, and Michel Ardan, as if his unfortunate friends could have heard him through that impenetrable medium!

The search went on under those conditions until the vitiated state of the air in the apparatus forced the divers to go up again.

The hauling in was begun at 6 p.m., and was not terminated before midnight.

“We will try again to-morrow,” said J.T.  Maston as he stepped on to the deck of the corvette.

“Yes,” answered Captain Blomsberry.

“And in another place.”

“Yes.”

J.T.  Maston did not yet doubt of his ultimate success, but his companions, who were no longer intoxicated with the animation of the first few hours, already took in all the difficulties of the enterprise.  What seemed easy at San Francisco in open ocean appeared almost impossible.  The chances of success diminished in a large proportion, and it was to chance alone that the finding of the projectile had to be left.

The next day, the 24th of December, notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding day, operations were resumed.  The corvette moved some minutes farther west, and the apparatus, provisioned with air again, took the same explorers to the depths of the ocean.

All that day was passed in a fruitless search.  The bed of the sea was a desert.  The day of the 25th brought no result, neither did that of the 26th.

It was disheartening.  They thought of the unfortunate men shut up for twenty-six days in the projectile.  Perhaps they were all feeling the first symptoms of suffocation, even if they had escaped the dangers of their fall.  The air was getting exhausted, and doubtless with the air their courage and spirits.