Owing to the superlatively excellent construction of the Nautilus, also on account of the _scaphanders_, or suits of diving armor, with which Marston and his friends had clothed themselves, the disagreeable sensations to which divers are ordinarily exposed, were hardly felt at all in the beginning of the descent.
Marston was about to congratulate his companions on the favorable auspices inaugurating their trip, when Murphy, consulting the instrument, discovered to his great surprise that the Nautilus was not making its time.

In reply to their signal "faster!" the downward movement increased a little, but it soon relaxed again.

Instead of less than two minutes, as at the beginning, it now took twelve minutes to make a hundred feet.

They had gone only seven hundred feet in thirty-seven minutes.

In spite of repeated signalling, their progress during the next hour was even still more alarming, one hundred feet taking exactly 59 minutes.