They Found Atlantis

by Dennis Wheatley

  “How does that work?” asked Sally.

  “Eh!” he glanced across at her. “Oh! A compression hammer released by electricity strikes on the ship’s bottom and the echo, thrown back from the sea floor, is picked up by a microphone, amplified and recorded. The longer the echo takes to come back the deeper the water is in that place.”

  The Doctor nodded. “But tell me please how that would help us. To know the depths is of little use—we shall only discover by actual sight.”

  “Listen,” the McKay leaned forward. “These electric sounding machines are pretty accurate you know. They’ll give you your depth to within half a fathom every time and the sea bottom we’re over seems to be rather like a succession of gentle sloping downs; anyhow there’s nothing jagged about it. Now you’re hunting for a group of great stones twenty or thirty feet high at least—if not a hundred. All right then, if we sail up and down working the electric depth recorder as frequently as possible and it suddenly starts to show sharp variations that ought to be the place you want. You stop the ship at once and down you go in your sphere—see what I mean?”

  “Himmel, yes! Why did I not think,” the Doctor cried with his fat face beaming. “I thank you Herr Kapitan. That will be far quicker than our dives every quarter mile. To-morrow we will try—”

  “Time please ladies and gentlemen—time,” called Slinger with sardonic humour, suddenly appearing in the doorway with his men. And thus ended another day.

  By seven o’clock next morning the fanatically eager little Doctor was up and dressed, and the moment he was let out of his cabin he sought Captain Ardow. The taciturn Russian made no difficulties and agreed with cold courtesy to his using the electric depth recorder. For four and a half hours the Doctor sat over it as the ship steamed at his request, round and round an outward spiral in a series of ever increasing circles. Depths from 850 to 902 fathoms were recorded, but the upward or downward curve of the graph never showed any sudden alteration. It was obvious that they were sailing round and round above the slopes of a rolling plain. Then at 11.30, more than seven miles south of the point from which they had started, the soundings suddenly became erratic. 901—893—900—890—888—897—. After which the echo did not reach the microphone clearly since the instrument only registered uneven scratches. The Doctor left it at the run to stop the ship proceeding further.

  A quarter of an hour afterwards the bathysphere went under water, only the cautious McKay remaining, of his party, in the ship.

  At 1.32 they had reached bottom and a message came up that they wished to rise 200 feet and then be towed a quarter of a mile towards the east, the drift of the ship having carried them to the west, despite the efforts of the officer on the bridge to keep, as nearly as possible on the spot at which they had halted.

  The McKay was just finishing lunch when the movement had been executed and, as he came on deck again, he wrinkled up his nose and sniffed a little. The sky was still serenely blue but somehow he didn’t like it. There was an uncanny stillness in the air. Without the least hesitation he turned aft and, stepping over the rope barriers at the risk of being shot, addressed the two gunmen who were standing by the wireless house:

  “Captain McKay presents his compliments to Captain Ardow and says he had better haul the bathysphere up at once because we’re in for dirty weather.”

  The men stared at him for a moment but, in a clear firm voice he repeated his message then turned his back and walked away to show that he had no hostile intentions, upon which one of them went off to find the Russian.

  No reply came back, but the clanking of the great crane, very shortly after, informed the McKay that his advice had been accepted. He glanced at his wrist watch, the time was 1.45 p.m., then again at the sky. It was still perfectly clear but he did not like the uncanny hush that had fallen.

  At 2.15 a small black cloud appeared on the horizon. The McKay studied it with grim foreboding. By 2.30 the whole sky in that quarter had become dark and threatening. There was still an hour to go before the bathysphere was due to reach the surface so the McKay again risked a bullet by telling the gunmen that, orders or no orders, he meant to go aft and take charge in the hope of expediting its arrival.

  One of the men held him up with a pistol but the other went off to find Slinger and a few moments later returned with his consent to the McKay being allowed aft to superintend operations.

  Having reached the scene of action he took the deck telephone from the man who was in communication with the bathysphere and shouted down it:

  “Below there?”

  “Yes,” Oscar’s voice came up over the line clear and untroubled from 3,000 feet beneath him.

  “Captain McKay presents his compliments to Doctor Tisch. There’s bad weather ahead. Tell the Doctor we mean to reel you up at top speed and that he’s to inform the ladies they have no need to be alarmed if they get a bit of a bumping—got that?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kapitan,” came the rather scared acknowledgement.

  “Right. Now we’ll have no time to coil the telephone hose down so it may kink and cause the wires to break. If you are cut off you’ll know that’s what has happened so sit tight and don’t worry.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kapitan,” Oscar replied in an even fainter voice and, despite the McKay’s injunctions not to worry, if Oscar could have seen the great black clouds which now obscured the sun he would have been very worried indeed. The bathysphere was not built to be hurled about in a violent storm or the cable intended to take the strain of spasmodic jerks from a ship pitching and tossing in heavy seas.

  The McKay thrust the instrument back into the operator’s hands and began to snap out orders. At first the seamen regarded him with hostile surprise as an interfering civilian, but they very soon understood that they were dealing with a man who knew his business. The crane began to reel in the cable at its utmost speed, a man with a sharp knife was set to slash the ties holding the rubber hose to it as they flashed past, and the hose itself was hauled on board coil after coil in wild confusion by all the hands that could be mustered. It wreathed and knotted in great loops and festoons despite their efforts to control it but the McKay felt that it mattered little if the wires it contained were broken in consequence. His one concern was to get the sphere up before it became impossible to land the party.

  The sea began to heave in a long rolling swell, the sinister moaning of a distant fast travelling wind reached them; great heavy single drops of rain hit the deck with a sharp crack then, at ten minutes to three, the storm burst with the bathysphere still 1,500 feet under water.

  The crew may have been the riff-raff of the seven seas who had accepted quadruple wages to shut their eyes to any irregularities which might occur on this unusual voyage, but they were sailors by profession and understood the brotherhood of the seas. That lifelong enemy of them all—the ocean—had risen against them. There was a job of work to be done and though the rain sheeted down in cataracts soaking them to the skin they stuck to it without a thought of questioning their unofficial orders. The McKay stood there short and square and grim at the after rail but cloaked in all the natural authority which came from years of command at sea and, to his occasional shouts there came back a cheerful “Ay, ay, Sir!” as they jumped to do his bidding.

  The ship was pitching heavily and every few moments a wave hit the stern with a loud thump, sending clouds of spray over the streaming men as they fought and struggled with the seemingly endless hose pipe. For one moment the McKay considered sending a message to Captain Ardow asking that the vessel should be headed due west to bring them under the lee of Pico Island, but any movement of the ship would mean added strain upon the cable, so he did not dare to risk it.

  The wind increased to half a gale, moaning through the rigging. The McKay cocked an anxious eye at the masthead to judge their degree of pitch and was not comforted by what he saw. Captain Ardow had the ship just under way and head on to the storm but the waves were breaking over the bow and each time their main
bulk surged below the hull the stern lifted right out of the water. The bathysphere was up to 500 feet, but the McKay knew that the strain on the cable must be appalling. It might snap at any moment. He sprang up a ladder into the control room of the crane house.

  “We’ll have to play her like a fish,” he told the engineer. “Steady now—watch for my signals,” then he clung to the doorway—peering out through the sheeting rain to judge the lift of the ship and raising or lowering his arm in accordance with it.

  As the stern was buoyed up on each successive wave crest the bathysphere cable was allowed to run out fifty to one hundred feet, then as the strain slackened it was checked and, when they sank into the trough, reeled in with the utmost rapidity.

  For close on half an hour the crane man played the bathysphere under the McKay’s directions like a salmon trout while the ship rode through the storm, but at last they got it to the surface and now the most difficult part of their task began. They had to land the sphere on its steel supports without staving it in against the girders.

  The risk entailed in this proceeding was so considerable that the McKay was almost inclined to leave the sphere dangling fifty feet under water, despite the awful buffeting that its inmates must be receiving, but he had no idea how long their oxygen supply would hold out. The storm might well continue to increase in violence and not blow itself out for forty-eight hours. It was certain now that it would not abate that day and if he left them there they might all be dead by morning.

  In consequence he called for volunteers to man a boat. Half a dozen of the crew stepped forward and he went over the side with them.

  Another half hour elapsed. Hampered by their cork jackets, their fingers numbed and slippery from the driving rain, they tossed up and down beside the bathysphere striving to attach the rope guys to the steel eyelets, but at last the job was accomplished. Battered and breathless they scrambled back on to the deck then came the tense moment when the crane and winches were brought into play.

  The McKay stood with his left arm round a stanchion and his right raised in the air. He waited for a big wave to break and then, as the ship sank into the trough, gave the signal. The bathysphere was lifted almost entirely out of the water, the winches clanked, the ropes pulled taut and drew it suddenly towards the stern of the ship. There was a loud clang on the girders and when the ship rose again it had been landed.

  The whole platform was awash waist high every other moment but the McKay and two other men were lowered to it with ropes round their bodies and succeeded in getting undone the bolts which held the sphere door in place, and ten minutes later the diving party had been hauled to safety.

  They were a pitiable sight, bruised, ill, terrified. Count Axel alone among them was able to climb the ladder to the deck; the rest had to be carried up bodily. Vladimir was unconscious, having hit his head against the steel wall of the sphere when thrown violently sideways by a heavy wave. Nicky’s face was chalk white and the Doctor’s a bilious green. Oscar had fainted and both the girls were trembling and retching in desperate bouts of sea-sickness.

  The sailors carried them to their cabins. Camilla’s maid put her mistress and Sally to bed while Slinger sent the stewards to look after the others. Count Axel attended to a nasty cut on his face, changed into dry clothes and then staggered up the heaving companion-way to the lounge. He found the McKay there already changed, busy mixing himself a badly needed whisky.

  “Drink?” said the McKay gruffly.

  “Thank you Captain, that was an exceedingly unpleasant business.”

  “That’s putting it mildly—you’re darn lucky to be alive in my opinion.”

  “You’re right, and we owe our lives to you so Slinger tells me. I can only hope for some opportunity to repay you.”

  The McKay shrugged. “Don’t thank me—thank the men. Whatever the risk to themselves they never hesitated for a second to obey my orders. It is a pity though that you should have got off lightly. You deserve to be below retching up your heart with the women.”

  “Really Captain!” Count Axel raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that a little ungenerous. May one enquire in what way I, particularly, have incurred your displeasure?”

  “Well—you encouraged them to go under in that blasted ball from the beginning—didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did. I was anxious that none of my friends should miss such a remarkable experience. You would, I think, feel the same if you had been down yourself and knew the strange beauty which lies beneath our feet. I was wrong to persuade the others perhaps but it had not occurred to me that we might be caught so suddenly in a storm. Surely that was rather an exceptional occurrence and one usually has ample warning when bad weather is approaching?”

  “True,” the McKay admitted a little reluctantly, “you might do a full season’s diving and not get caught again like that, but I’ve been scared of these descents from the first. Something else may happen. Say one of the windows was cracked against a jutting rock as you are lowered to the bottom. You’d all be dead in ten seconds.”

  Count Axel smiled as he drained his whisky. “Such a misfortune is most unlikely. Anyhow I shall not let to-day’s unpleasant experience prevent me from going down again immediately the weather clears.”

  “By the time that happens we may all be on our way to the Falklands,” said the McKay gloomily.

  “True. For the moment I had forgotten our more serious trouble. I should be terribly distressed though if we are shanghaied before we can go down again, because I am certain now that we are about to succeed in proving the Atlantis theory.”

  “You did find something on this last dive then?”

  “Yes—not much. We were down for so little time. Our first landing was useless owing to the fact that the ship had drifted from its original position, but we tried moving a quarter of a mile to the east and found ourselves on the fringe of a group of enormous stones. They had been rounded by the centuries of friction from the currents on the ocean floor but they were quite unlike any natural formation. We only saw them for a moment and then we were pulled up. We asked the reason over the telephone and were told ‘Captain Ardow’s orders.’ Having no knowledge of the approaching storm we were very annoyed, and puzzled. Then we got your message. The trouble began about half an hour afterwards and by the time we were up to five-hundred feet that infernal ball was being tossed about like a crazy thing. The telephonist was being violently ill already and one by one the others followed suit. Sally was the last to give way except for Vladimir and he, poor fellow, knocked himself out when the cable was slackened too suddenly and the sphere nearly turned turtle.”

  “Well, I’m glad I was out of that party,” the McKay remarked grimly; “but if you’re right and you have actually found remains of the Atlantean city, I still don’t see how the Doctor’s going to prove it. Any hieroglyphics which may have been on these stones will have been erased by the currents long ago.”

  “Above the sea floor yes, but remember that they are half buried in solid lava and, just as the lava from Vesuvius covered and preserved the contents of the houses in Pompeii so that by scraping it away even wall paintings, and the most fragile ornaments have been recovered—so it should be here.”

  “Perhaps, but it is impossible for you to carry on any excavations while you are cooped up in the bathysphere, and equally impossible for you to get outside it.”

  “The bathysphere will do our excavating for us,” smiled the Count. “Rough and ready excavating I admit, so unfortunately there is little likelihood of our getting any but broken remains to the surface. However, it is a very remarkable piece of mechanism, and in its undercarriage it contains an electric drill capable of boring holes in the larva wherever we want them. Another attachment will insert dynamite charges in the holes then we shall be drawn up a few hundred feet and explode them.”

  “I see. After that I suppose the sphere will go down again and collect the bits with its claws and shovels so that you can bring them up with you and sort out
your catch at your leisure.”

  “Exactly.”

  The McKay nodded. “Well, I certainly take off my hat to the little Doctor for having thought it all out so thoroughly. But I doubt if you will be able to go down to-morrow.”

  The ship had covered about fifteen knots and was now coming under the lea of Pico island but she still rolled and shuddered each time the great waves buffetted her beam and clouds of spray mingled with the rain that lashed her decks.

  That evening Count Axel and the McKay dined alone. The others were far too ill to join them and Vladimir, they feared, had sustained slight concussion. He had received the blow on his head while endeavouring to hold Camilla steady and, sick as she was, she sent hour by hour to enquire after him.

  When Slinger arrived on his nightly visit to enforce the curfew he smiled at the McKay.

  “Great stuff to-day, Captain. The show you put up getting in the bathysphere enables me to give the waiting world a real thrill to-morrow.”

  The McKay only grunted.

  “EX NAVAL CAPTAIN, ZEEBRUGGE V.C. SAVES MILLIONAIRE DUCHESS AND HER PARTY.” Slinger went on with an amiable grin. “That’s the headline twenty million people will be goggling over at their breakfast tables. I’ve radioed a great description of your epic battle with the elements and started a rumour that the lovely Duchess is thinking of marrying her brave rescuer. I’m beginning to think I ought to have been a journalist and not a lawyer after all.”

  “You’re a bloody crook!” said the McKay sullenly.

  “So it seems,” agreed the imperturbable Slinger. “I am that greatest of all tragedies. A gifted and conscientious professional man who has failed to make an honest living. Now drink up and think that over between the sheets.”

  On the Friday conditions were slightly better but, although the storm had blown itself out, the sky was still leaden and high seas put any descent in the bathysphere out of the question. The ship still rolled and pitched with a beastly lurching motion and every rivet in it strained when an unusually large wave lifted its screw out of the water.