Two long miles below lay the sea bottom, darker than the center of the longest and darkest tunnel ever built by man, under pressures greater than any ever built up in factory or laboratory, a world unknown and unexplored, to be visited not by men but perhaps by their dead bodies encased in and made part of the iron coffins of their crushed-in ships. And the big ships, to insignificant man so large and so solid, sank to that sea bottom, to the immemorial ooze in the darkness and cold, with no more ado or stir than would be caused comparatively by specks of dust falling on a ballroom floor.
-- Narration   (Chapter 1)

Importance: This quote is taken from the prologue-like Chapter 1, which uses near-poetic language of the sort included here to set the scene, or more accurately define the set of circumstances, in which the story unfolds. The quote here is an important...