Word: diver
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When Ryan and Quinn are not trying to retrieve the bullion against the onslaughts of the elements, they are pursuing the lady skipper of a banana boat (Mala Powers) and a nightclub entertainer (Suzan Ball). Sample of the dampish dialogue: Diver Quinn, parrying a marriage proposal by Suzan-"Think of what our kids might be like, full of bends and nitro bubbles." City Beneath the Sea has a few eerily effective underwater scenes, filmed in Technicolor, depicting Port Royal's ghostly ruins...
Cousteau and his companions are the forerunners of a new era of undersea exploration. Using the remarkable aqualung, a light apparatus which supplies the diver with compressed air, they were able to plunge to depths of over three hundred feet, where the pressure is capable of crushing a submarine. Through Costeau's engrossing account and his starting photos, the reader can share in some measure the fascination of the curious realm of silence--a world of unknown colors, of sunken ships and playful octopi...
From one danger, however, even the aqualung could not secure the divers--the drunken elation induced by nitrogen gas under the tremendous pressures of the depths. In the intoxication of the "zone of rapture", the diver may lose control, as one of the group did, and tear the aqualung from his back as an impulsive gift to a passing fish...
...rapture, which comes on at about 200 ft., is apparently caused by the oversaturation of the nervous system with nitrogen or carbon dioxide under the increased pressure. "The first stage," writes Cousteau, "is a mild anesthesia, after Which the diver becomes a god. If a passing fish seems to require air, the crazed diver may tear out his air pipe or mouth grip [and offer it to the fish] as a sublime gift...
...ball. My lips swelled grotesquely on the mouth grip. The air was syrup. The water jelled around me as though I were smothered in aspic. I hung witless on the rope. Standing aside was a smiling, jaunty man, my second self, perfectly self-contained, grinning sardonically at the wretched diver. [He] ordered that I unloose the rope and go on down...