The Laestrygonians by Aleksandr Kuprin — Read

Two weeks after their arrival, the Italians built and launched a large raft, on which they placed a steam-engine, an air-pumping machinery. The long shaft of a crane, like a huge fishing-rod, rose slantingly over the raft. Once, on a Sunday, Salvatore Trama was lowered for the first time into the water of the bay. He wore the ordinary gray rubber suit of a diver, in which he appeared larger than usual, shoes with leaden soles, and iron shirtfront on his chest, and a round brass helmet which encased his head. He walked on the bottom of the bay for about half an hour, and his road was marked by a mass of air-bubbles which welled up to the surface. And a week later all Balaklava learned that on the following day the diver was to go down at the White Stones, to the depth of a hundred yards. And when on that morrow the small, miserable launch towed the raft to the mouth of the bay, almost all the fishermen's barks which were stationed in the bay were waiting at the White Stones.

The main advantage of Mr. Restucci's invention was that it enabled a diver to reach a depth at which a man in an ordinary scaphander would be crushed by the tremendous pressure of the water. It was with surprise and, at any rate, with a feeling of deep respect that our fishermen watched the preparations which were being made before their eyes. First the steam crane lifted up and set down a strange case which resembled slightly the human figure deprived of its head and arms. It was made of a thick sheet of copper, on the outside covered with pale-blue enamel. Then this scaphander was opened like a gigantic cigar-case, in which, instead of a cigar, a human body was to be placed. Salvatore Trama, smoking a cigarette, calmly watched these preparations and lazily smiled, passing careless remarks from time to time. Then he flung the cigarette end overboard, waddled over to the case, and slid into it. Several mechanics busied themselves over him for a long time, setting up all sorts of apparatus, and it must be said that when the work was done, the diver presented quite a dreadful spectacle. Only his arms remained outside, the rest of his body being shut up in a solid pale-blue enamelled coffin of tremendous weight. A huge pale-blue ball, with three bull's-eyes -- one in the front and two on the sides -- and with an electric lantern in the forehead, hid his head; the main cable, a rubber pipe for air, a signalling rope, a telephone wire, and a light-conducting wire seemed to cover the apparatus with a net, increasing the air of oddity and dread which rested on this pale-blue massive mummy, provided with living human arms.