Explore "The Green Girl" by Jack Williamson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In the deep sea the temperature is just above freezing; the darkness is absolute; the pressure is many tons to the square inch. But still, life has been found, even in the greatest depths. It is strange life, to be sure, for the organisms must be developed to withstand the great pressure, and to generate their own light. It is an odd truth of nature that there is some form of life adapted for each locality. There are the mosses and reindeer of the frigid north, the cactus and lizards of the burning deserts, the blind creatures of the Mammoth Cave, the stranger things of the deepest seas! May it not be that there are entities living out in space, or in the earth's interior, of which we may never know? Such were my thoughts as we dropped to meet the menace that had risen from under the sea!
We sank swiftly, and steadily the manometer climbed. The water was dark but for the bright beams of the searchlights, and very cold, though, with the insulation and the electric heaters, we felt no discomfort. The pressure on the plates must have been terrific beyond conception. It seemed impossible that metal -- even our cleverly braced plates of the wonderful beryllium bronze -- could withstand so much, when even the rocks of the ocean floor "creep" and bend beneath the water's weight!