They Found Atlantis

by Dennis Wheatley

  “Where could such a place have been. Have we a pointer to it? Yes, for we find the homes of many others which we can trace to be in the mainland regions bordering on the central Atlantic. Innumerable trees and plants are common to Europe and the Atlantic states of America yet are not to be found west of the Rocky mountains. Upon the Pacific coast there are no hollys, burr-woods, lindens, gums, elms, mulberrys, hickorys or beeches. How, if they could not cross the comparatively narrow mountain barriers could they have passed from one side of the great ocean to the other unless, at one time, there had been fertile land and chains of islands between.”

  “Seeds are carried by the sea and by birds,” suggested the McKay.

  The Doctor stared at him. “That is true and it might have happened in a few rare cases, but not more—over such a great distance, and why please did not the sea and the birds carry the same seeds to the fertile sunny shores of South Africa? No. A central Atlantic continent is the only practical solution to the problem. That was the nursery where, through countless generations, from a state of primitive husbandry up to that of trained horticulturists, men must have laboured to produce and perfect practically every cereal, fruit and vegetable which we eat to-day.”

  “All right, I’ll give you that,” grinned the McKay.

  “Good. We go on then,” the Doctor leaned forward again:

  “The description of the wealth and magnificence of Poseidon’s temple may at first seem overstrained in Plato’s account, but we have its parallel in the great temple of the Sun god of the Incas at Chuzco in Peru. When this was first visited by Pizarro thirty years after Columbus discovered America he states that it was a veritable mine of gold. Images, pillars, cornices, and even the flowers in the sacred garden being fashioned from the precious metal. The gold from that astounding temple was shipped home in the Spanish treasure fleets and, although it has been reminted many times in various currencies, its bulk was so great that it still represents a considerable portion of the gold currency in circulation in the world to-day.

  “To leave Plato now and note various other correspondences. Our biblical legend states that Noah was the hero of the Flood. The ancient Mexicans had a similar story and a similar hero, they called him Nata, or Noe. In yet another aboriginal American tongue he is known as Hurakan, which has a strange resemblance to our own word hurricane, and they may well have christened him that on account of his coming up out of the great tempestuous waters.

  “The Mandan Indians, although an inland people, preserve amongst them as the central focus of their religion an Ark, which they term the Big Canoe. Each year one of their witch doctors is painted white all over and comes among them as the white man who arrived from the waters bringing them peace, civilisation and prosperity.

  Our Bible story tells us that Noah caulked the seams of the Ark with asphalt and we find the greatest pitch lakes in the West Indies. Further we are told that God gave the rainbow as His sign that He would never again destroy the earth by a deluge. This is also the belief of the Peruvians.

  “The Mexicans, like ourselves, baptised children with a view to cleansing them from original sin. They mummified their dead as did the Egyptians; and many curious unnatural customs with regard to childbirth are common to both hemispheres.

  “Even the place names of Central America and the earliest civilised regions of the Mediterranean bear a resemblance which it is almost impossible to explain except by the Atlantean theory. Chol, Zuivana, Colua and Cholima are four ancient Armenian towns. In Central America we have Chol-ula, Zuivan, Colua-can and Colima. The gods Pan and Mais of the Greeks are to be found as Pan and Maya in Central American mythology. The god of the Welsh, Hu the Mighty is found in Hu-natu, the hero god of the American Quiche Indians. Bel or Baal, the Phoenician deity whose cult is to be found in all parts of Europe, is represented almost as strongly by Balam among many tribes of American aborigines. And perhaps more important than any of these the great Sun god Ra of Egypt is identical with the Peruvian Sun god Ra-mi.

  “Examine resemblances between the Chiapenee American Indian and Hebrew. ‘Son’ in one is Been, in the other Ben, ‘daughter’ Batz in the first and Bath in the second, ‘father’ Abagh in one, Ahba in the other. ‘King’ is Molo—”

  “Hi stop!” exclaimed Nicky. “This is getting too much for me. Let’s get on to something else.”

  “I regret Herr Costello if I bore you,” the Doctor said frigidly, “but these explanations are necessary to prove my case. I shall not detain you much longer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nicky apologised, “forget it please and go right on with what you want to say.”

  “I thank you. The very word Atlantis speaks for itself. Atlas, we are told, was the first King of Atlantis and gave his name to the Atlantic ocean, the Mexican word Atl means water. There is an Atlas Mountain in Morocco, a town called Atlan on the shores of Central America. The Atlantes were a people well known to the Greeks and Romans who lived on the North West coast of Africa. In Central America we have the Aztecs, whose history states that they originally came from a country called Aztland. What can be clearer than the association between these two opposite points in the Atlantic ocean.

  “In Plato’s account of Atlantis he speaks of a vast canal system, great harbours, bridges and fortifications. The Peruvian roads and bridges through the passes of the Andes were feats of engineering which have hardly been surpassed in the modern world. The canal system in Egypt alone enabled a sufficient area to be placed under cultivation for so great a population to exist in the restricted valley of the Nile. The artificial lake of Moesis, which they created as a reservoir, was 450 miles in circumference and 350 feet deep with subterranean channels, flood gates, locks and dams by which the wilderness was reclaimed from sterility. The Mexicans and the Egyptians both erected stone structures, similar in type, which are larger and more durable than anything modern civilisation has yet produced—their Pyramids. Owing to their inaccessibility to the ordinary traveller it is not sufficiently recognised that those in the New World are greater than those in the Old. The base of the pyramid at Choula covers 45 acres of land compared to the 12 acres covered by the great pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. The masonry of both people had reached such a degree of accuracy that the joints in their stone work are scarcely perceptible and not wider than the thickness of silver paper. Both had astrological systems showing a degree of scientific exactitude with which we have caught up only in the last century yet, neither of these amazing cilivisations had any infancy and their art has no archaic period.

  “Ten thousand years would be but little for man to develop from a cave dwelling savage to such a high state of culture, yet all trace of that 10,000 years has been blotted from the face of the earth. Suddenly, from nowhere it seems, this race who must have appeared like gods to the barbarians, arrived in countries thousands of miles apart; and in a few generations they are creating marvels that have never been surpassed. Where did they come from? Where is the evidence of their long struggle against nature? The only conceivable explanation is the acceptance of Plato’s record—that it lies beneath the waves that cover the lost continent.

  “If further evidence is needed we have abundant historical memories to confirm the belief embodied as mythology in the religions of these races which had been completely separated for thousands of years until the rediscovery of the New World in the fifteenth century. The Incas and the Aztecs trace the foundation of their empires to a fair-haired, blue-eyed bearded stranger, who came up from the waters out of the East. This god-like figure is found with many names but all accounts agree that he brought with him infinite knowledge, peace and prosperity, teaching them husbandry, metallurgy, weaving, and to live in houses instead of rude tents and caves; then, after giving them a new code of laws his spirit returned to the island Paradise in the East from which he had come.

  “It was on account of a similar fully accepted belief, so Cortes relates, that he was able, with a handful of white men, to subdue the legions of the Mexican Emp
eror Montezuma. They believed that their bearded myth heroes had come again from their island Paradise in the East and they fell down in their thousands before the Spanish lord, Alvarado, worshipping him as a god in human form because he possessed the white skin, the blue eyes, the magnificent golden hair, which tallied in all particulars with those of his predecessor who had brought them the blessings of civilisation.

  “Turn now to the Mediterranean side of the Atlantic. The ancient peoples of the Euphrates believed that Ea, god of the Ocean, first brought civilisation from out of the great waters of the West to Assyria. In the Osiris legends of Egypt we get an exact parallel of the Mexican belief. The fair-skinned golden-haired Osiris arrived among the dusky primitive Egyptians, taught them the arts of agriculture, architecture and to observe a new highly civilised code of laws. Then his spirit departed to the islands of Sekhet-Aaru in the West, which are specifically stated to be intersected by canals filled with running water, which caused them to be always green and fertile. Wherever we turn in the mythologies of the Mediterranean peoples we find constant and persistent mention of this antediluvian world, the Garden of Eden, The Elysian Fields, The Gardens of the Hesperides and the Islands of the Blessed. Invariably this happy state is situated towards the West in the great open ocean that lies beyond the Straits of Gibraltar; so that the belief is even perpetuated in Europe to this very day in that colloquial expression for death ‘to go West’.

  “The ancient universal belief in the spirits of the dead going to an underworld is part of the same tradition. It was not until comparatively recent times that the expression was taken to mean a world under the earth. It signified originally the world beyond or under the horizon.

  “The only possible explanation therefore of the American Heaven being placed in the East and the Mediterranean peoples’ Paradise being universally in the West, is that it lay somewhere between the two and is a race memory of that great peaceful island where all civilisation was first born, in the centre of the Atlantic.”

  As the Doctor ceased there was a moment’s hush then, his lined face breaking into a boyish smile, the McKay exclaimed:

  “Doctor, I owe you an apology. I had no right to express an opinion without knowing more about the subject. I couldn’t attempt to confute a single one of your arguments if I racked my brains for a month.”

  “There are more—details—checkings up, a hundred points I have not yet touched upon,” the Doctor burst out determinedly. “Take the mound builders—”

  “Take nothing!” Nicky interrupted, “I’ve had enough. Once I was through College I took a vow against learning. We’ve heard all we want to of this mystic isle. What about it now Camilla?”

  “The Doctor has convinced me about his theory all right,” Camilla hesitated a moment. “But is the expedition practical—that’s what I want to know?”

  “That’s it,” echoed Sally. “Is there a chance in a hundred of our finding this place that’s been eleven and a half thousand years beneath the seas?”

  “Yes, yes, Fraulein,” the Doctor insisted. “Ten years ago, even with the secret of the latitude and longitude which I possess—no. Five years ago—no. But now that Dr. William Beebe has invented his bathysphere for deep sea-diving—yes. In my model which is much larger I will take you to the very place where is the sunken gold.”

  “In that case I’m all for it,” Sally agreed, and Camilla smiled round at them.

  “All right then—the party’s on if you wish.”

  Thus the final decision was taken which led this diverse group of people into the strangest adventure that has ever befallen men and women in our time.

  CHAPTER VI

  THE THREE LOVERS OF CAMILLA

  Doktor herman tisch’s mystery ship was steaming almost due North-West towards the little coast town of Horta on the island of Fayal in the Azores. He had chosen it for his base in preference to Punta Delgada on the larger island of Saint Miguel because it lay nearer to the spot which was indicated on the precious cylinder of baked clay that he had unearthed from the banks of the Euphrates.

  Eleven thousand four hundred years is but a split second in astronomical time and it needed only decimal corrections in the bearings of the fixed stars to give him the exact site where the mighty capital of Atlantis had once stood.

  37° 52″N. 27° 8″W was the all important cypher which he kept locked in his own brain. He had an almost morbid dread that some one might steal his secret and forestall his great discovery so he would not even make a jotting of the map reference in his note book. When Camilla had pressed him, as her right through financing the expedition, for details of their destination, he had refused to say more than that the place lay between the latitudes of Richmond, Virginia; and Lisbon; which still left him sixty miles leeway, and he refused to give any indication of its longitude at all so they still knew only that it was somewhere to the southward of the Azores.

  This uncharted point upon the map which held all the Doctor’s interest lay well within the 1,000 fathom line. There might be pockets of a greater depth, of course, but he had 10,000 feet of cable on his drums, and so enough to reach bottom in the bathysphere, even if it was nearly double the depth that he anticipated, for the few miles round that area in which it was his unshakable conviction that the Golden Temple of Poseidon had once reared its flashing pinnacles to the sky.

  All thoughts of Slinger’s sinister designs upon Camilla which, at the last, had alone made his expedition possible, had left him. He was consumed with impatience now to reach his destination and get to work so on their first morning out from Madeira he paced the deck oblivious of his surroundings while the others explored the ship.

  It was an ex-cargo vessel of 2,500 tons, its forward part and midships converted to the semblance of a private yacht. Below the bridge a wide lounge with comfortable furniture and gay chintz curtains opened on to the sun deck where what had formerly been the forward hatch was boarded and canvassed to form a swimming pool. The dining room lay beneath the lounge and on either side of it were the cabins which accommodated the guests. To Camilla’s annoyance the ship had no deck cabins but she had one which contained a private bath and sitting-room forming the owner’s suite. Contrary to usual arrangements the entire accommodation abaft the bridge below decks was given over to the crew, while above, all the available space was occupied by the huge drums which carried the cable of the bathysphere and the massive machinery for lowering it into the depths. The bathysphere itself, supported by two huge steel girders locked into the hull of the ship, rode on the water line astern.

  Captain Ardow took Camilla and her party round. They were, at first, uncertain of his nationality but on enquiry found him to be a Russian. He was a tall, lean, grey man, courteous but silent and unsmiling. Camilla invited him to dine that night but he asked her to excuse him with a firmness that discouraged her from pursuing the suggestion and went on to request that she would not extend similar invitations to his officers during the voyage or encourage them to mingle with her guests. As his reason for this lack of sociability he stated that the crew, which had been scraped together at the last moment, was a mixed one; so his officers would need to supervise it closely if the ship was to be kept neat and trim and he preferred that they should not be distracted from their duties.

  Slinger congratulated himself upon his choice of Captain, for when he had made his arrangements with the Doctor in Paris he had insisted on selecting his own man for the job with power to pick his officers and crew. Evidently Captain Ardow meant to earn the very considerable sum he had been promised for his complaisance. He was taking no chances that any of his people should warn Camilla that something queer was afoot or cause trouble at the last moment through having formed a pleasant association with any member of her party during the trip.

  For a few moments they all stood in the stern of the ship staring at the great spherical steel bathysphere with its row of small round protruding windows like flat eyes on short thick stalks.

  “I should
have thought that the glass in those portholes would have been liable to burst, however thick they are, under the immense pressure they will have to sustain at any considerable depth,” remarked Nicky.

  “They are not glass but fused quartz,” replied Captain Ardow.

  “How can you see through quartz?” enquired Camilla, “the bits I’ve seen in museums are all misty even when it’s the kind that’s supposed to be lumps of crystal.”

  “This is fused,” Count Axel informed her with his quiet smile. “Not only is it far stronger than ordinary plate glass but infinitely clearer. So clear in fact that when you look through it things appear to be nearer than they are.”

  “That’s fair enough,” agreed Nicky, “and I don’t doubt we’ll see the ocean bottom plenty but we can’t get outside that thing once we’ve been screwed into it so what I don’t get is how we’re to pick up the gold when we find it.”

  “There are dredges underneath the sphere which can be operated by electricity from inside it,” Captain Ardow told him. “You cannot perceive them now for they are under water, but they are like the claws and pincers of a great crab.”

  Prince Vladimir Renescu stood by, a faintly supercilious smile on his firm lips. The arguments of Count Axel and the Doctor for the existence of Atlantis had passed right over his head. He still regarded the whole trip only as a heaven sent opportunity to get Camilla on her own. That afternoon he succeeded.