“How can the tender help? Its crew won’t be armed and it would be hours before they could get us assistance. Whereas Kate’s there—already—up on deck—waiting for us.” Sally burst out excitedly.
“But what are you so scared he’s going to do to you m’dear?”
“Oh, I don’t know—I don’t know. But he’s found out about that will and he’ll be furious. You know that horrid cold merciless stare of his.”
“I’ve got much more to fear than you darling,” Camilla gulped and suddenly burst into tears.
Vladimir did not know how to contain himself any longer. The sight of his so beautiful Duchess weeping in a fit of uncontrollable terror from fear of this bully Kate was too much for him. Bozo was seated immediately in his rear. With a sudden totally unexpected movement he swung round and smashed his great fist into the gunman’s face.
Bozo’s head was jerked backward and hit the steel side of the bathysphere a terrific crack. His gun slipped from his fingers before he knew what had hit him and he slid down to the floor unconscious, black blood streaming from his broken nose.
The Prince grabbed the automatic and laughed with boyish glee. “Now,” he declared waving the weapon dangerously in challenge to the world, “who shall lay a touch upon my pet-lamb. Camilla my so loved remit your fears I beg. Anyone who speaks unpleasantness to you so beautiful I will shoot, yes instantly—just as I would a dirty dog.”
“For God’s sake be careful with that thing!” cried the McKay.
“Have no troubles my nice Captain. With firearms I am an intimate, and in shooting I crack like a double dab.”
“Well I congratulate you Prince,” said Count Axel. “That was a courageous piece of business and admirably executed. This man’s pistol may come in handy if the fears of the Duchess and Sally are justified, but I do hope you won’t use it except in the last extremity. Remember there will be at least a dozen like it against you and a couple of machine guns as well.”
“I don’t see that you’ve done much good anyhow,” remarked Nicky gloomily. “It will only infuriate them when they find that you’ve knocked out one of their men, and we’ve no means of getting rid of the body even if he were dead. The moment he fails to come out of the sphere and they find him unconscious they’ll cover us with their rods and take that one off you.”
“My poor Nicky you are made jealous,” the Prince laughed again, “because I also can now say ‘I hit him—didn’t I—right on the nose.”
The incident at least had the effect of stopping Camilla’s tears and she clung to Vladimir’s free arm while she stared out of the porthole; no longer even registering the great lemon yellow Finger Squid they were passing on their way up, but endeavouring to persuade herself that her brave young Roumanian would protect her from Kate’s wrath when they reached the surface.
Sally sat silent, clutching the McKay’s hand in both of hers and trying to still her fears, while he, Count Axel and the Doctor considered the new position. Although they did not voice their thoughts all three had come to the conclusion that, courageous as Vladimir’s action had been, considering that he might well have received a bullet in the back, his bravado would be of little use to them when the bathysphere was hoisted on to its supports. The McKay placed his chief hope in obtaining help through the people on the tender, but he was not acutely worried by Kate’s arrival since he could not convince himself that there was any real reason why Kate should have any cause to put them through the mill.
Count Axel was dreading that Vladimir’s rashness might precipitate a general massacre and had determined to keep within clutching distance of him directly they left the sphere; in order that he might prevent the Prince using the weapon he had secured unless it came to the unlikely point of their lives being actually threatened.
“Sally,” said Camilla in a low voice.
“Yes, darling?”
“Don’t you think we ought to tell them—now.”
“I don’t see that it matters dear. When we discussed it we agreed that their knowing would not make the least difference to our chances of escape. But tell them if you like.”
“Well,” Camilla hesitated. “This is why Sally and I are so frightened. When Kate forced me to sign that will he didn’t know that—”
She got no further. They had risen about 800 feet and only just moved on after one of the regulation halts for a tie to be removed. Now, quite unexpectedly, they stopped again.
For a moment they sat silent, expecting their steady upward progress to be resumed, but nothing happened. The ball continued to hang motionless.
“Ask what is the matter,” said the Doctor. He had a faint but uncomfortable thought that the crane machinery might have jammed.
“What’s happened? Anything wrong?” enquired Nicky into the telephone.
Oscar’s voice came back in reply: “Orders from the bridge that we are to let you remain suspended where you are mein Herr.”
Nicky informed the others and, as they pondered silently on this change of plan, he turned back to the instrument. “Let’s have it Oscar—what’s the big idea?”
“Wait,” said Oscar. Then, after a pause of quite two minutes, he spoke again in a guttural whisper: “A warship has arrived. It is British and they have lowered a boat.”
“Good man!” said Nicky, “keep me posted if you can.” With a beaming face he swung round and passed on the news.
“By Jove! Then my signals were picked up after all.” The McKay suddenly burst into song.
“What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
Shave his chin with a rusty razor
Early—in—the—”
“Stop!” shouted Sally, among a chorus of excited enquiries. “What signals?”
“Why,” he announced with modest pleasure, “I’ve been morsing from my cabin with the light switch every night since Kate first seized the yacht. Someone was bound to spot the flashes from the porthole sometime—but I didn’t hope for much until we crossed the shipping belts on our way South.”
“O! you hero!” Sally’s big grey eyes were damp with relief and joyful emotion. “You never told us a thing about it—you’ve saved us after all!”
“By Crikey!” Vladimir slapped the McKay on the shoulder enthusiastically. “You are a black horse and no mess up!”
“What’s that,” Nicky asked eagerly at the telephone. Then he turned again: “Oscar says that a Naval Officer and a party of men have just come on board.”
The McKay winked at Sally. “Aren’t you glad that scoundrel Kate came back now? He’s arrived just in time to meet the Navy.”
Count Axel gave a low delighted chuckle. “It has been an amazing experience and we are no worse after all. Now that the world knows of the hold-up the Duchess’s fortune is safe, and while Kate has spent thousands in organising his coup, we have been quietly carrying on our diving just as we planned. All his schemes have gone for nothing while we have actually found Atlantis!”
“The exploration—you will not stop now Gnädige Hertzogin—but permit it to go on,” the Doctor asked anxiously.
“Of course, Doctor—of course.” Camilla gave him a gracious smile. “We will refit as soon as we possibly can and then you shall carry on for just as long as you like.”
He seized her hand and kissed it, while the McKay broke into song once more:
“Hi! Hi! up she rises
Hi! Hi! up she rises
Hi! Hi! up—she—”
Suddenly the sphere began to move again. Not up—but down. They stared at each other questioningly. To find themselves sinking when they expected to be drawn up at any moment by their rescuers was startling enough but what followed held them silent with a quake of fear.
Instead of being gently lowered at the usual speed of two minutes to a hundred feet, the ball was gathering speed as it went down. Fish, squids, prawns, jellies, sea-snails and shoals of arrow worms began to flash past the windows at an alarming speed.<
br />
“Quick Nicky!” yelled the McKay. “Order them to slow us up—what’s that madman on the crane up to?” The appalling thought had flashed into his mind that the undercarriage of the sphere contained a load of dynamite and a couple of dozen fulminite of mercury detonators. If they hit bottom at this pace they would all be blown to hell.
“Stop us!” shouted Nicky into the telephone. “Stop us, damn you or we’ll crash for sure!”
No reply came from the other end, and so it seemed that Oscar had left the instrument. Then he heard a ragged fusillade of distant shots.
“Something’s wrong,” he gasped, “they’re shooting at each other up there.”
About sixteen minutes had elapsed since the bathysphere had started, without warning, on its upward journey. It had risen some eight hundred feet but now, despite the resistance of the water, its weight and that of the eight people in it, caused fish and squids to slither past its rounded sides as it hurtled unchecked at full speed towards the bottom.
Fortunately Sally and Camilla were not aware of the acute danger due to the dynamite stored in its base, and anticipated no more than that it would hit the sea floor with a horrid bump. They were much more concerned in wondering what was going on above.
“Try again Nicky—try again,” Camilla cried anxiously. “Ask what’s happening up on deck.”
“I am,” bawled Nicky, “can’t you hear me—but the swine refuses to answer,” and it was true that he had never ceased to demand or plead for information from his instrument which was now so sinisterly dumb.
The McKay judged that they had dropped at least 700 feet. He knew that the crash must come at any second and then the horrible blackout. It would be almost instantaneous anyway; yet time is an illusion, happy days pass before their full joy is even remotely realised, one can only savour something of them afterwards in retrospect; and anxious hours drag by while the minute hand of the clock crawls like a snail circling the dial. Who can say, when a man blows his brains out, that the pause between his finger pressing the trigger and the moment when he is really dead may not seem to him like a month of shattering overwhelming agony in which tissue is torn from tissue with unendurable successive and separate spasms of torture as the bullet crashes through his skull. He put his arm round Sally’s shoulders then closed his eyes and waited.
Suddenly there was a terrific jolt, they were lifted from their seats for a second, then flung together in a tangled heap.
The bathysphere had been completely arrested in its rapid descent, and hovered uncertainly for a moment. When they recovered from the shock they realised that the searchlight had gone out.
Nicky screamed down the telephone. He screamed and blasphemed in vain. He knew that the line was already dead.
Camilla clung to Vladimir. He had his two great arms locked round her in a defiant, protective embrace.
The Doctor scrambled to his feet and produced a hand torch. He flashed it at the window, the sphere was sinking again, but more slowly now, it had not had time to gather pace.
After what seemed to be an eternity but was actually no more than a minute they came to rest on the bottom with a gentle bump.
The blue beam from the Doctor’s torch, focused on a porthole, penetrated the inky blackness no more than a foot, but into it there swam a new snake-like creature from above. Dead black, no more than three inches thick, and seemingly endless, it passed through the beam in graceful looping curves.
The McKay stared at it with sudden horror. He knew that it was no living thing but the cable coiling down from above as it sank in great festoons about them. It had snapped, and they were trapped there, 900 fathoms down, where no human hand could ever bring them aid.
CHAPTER XV
DEATH HOVERS IN THE DARKNESS
The Doctor knew too what that thin curving line of falling cable meant. Someone in the ship above had jammed the lever into reverse when the bathysphere was running out at a speed far greater than had ever been intended. The violence of the check had proved too great a strain. It had snapped somewhere in its mile of length above their heads. There was nothing to be done—nothing. He switched out his torch.
The black, utterly impenetrable, darkness closed down upon them as if they had suddenly been struck blind. Then a glimmer of greyness showed the ports and, as their eyes recovered from the change, they saw once more that eternal devil dance of ghostly shapes in the dull luminosity carried by the strange creatures of the deep.
Each one of the seven conscious persons in the sphere now guessed what had happened and each was so appalled that none of them could speak. Subconsciously they understood that they had been caught—trapped beyond any possible hope of escape—in this small circular steel chamber nine hundred fathoms down; but for a little their brains refused to take it in—could not admit it—and rebelled against the terrible thought that they had been severed completely from all the life that they had previously known—with utter unalterable finality.
A horrible unnatural silence lasted for almost two minutes, each of which seemed like the passing of many days. Stark ungovernable fear held them in its grip like a physical paralysis then Count Axel relaxed a little and sighed heavily.
He had always hoped that when death came to him he would be able to meet it with a bow. He was not afraid of death because he had unshakable faith in the survival of his Kama. He had enjoyed his present life but his principal regret to leave it would be that he must pass that strange barrier which blots out all but the vaguest intuitive memories of earlier experiences before a soul is born again. Now, he was not so certain that he would be able to greet death as he had always planned. It was one thing to die by a bullet, drowning, a street accident perhaps, or even after a long and painful illness during which such fortitude as he could muster had been displayed; but quite another to sit there cramped and hopeless waiting for his companions to show the first signs of madness and eventually to die a screaming maniac, fighting for the last breath of air.
“We’re going to die!” said Sally at last, in a whisper that held a terrible conviction, and then again, her voice rising to a shriller note, “We’re going to die!”
“Steady m’dear,” the McKay’s arm was still round her shoulders and he pressed her nearer. He would have given anything in the world had he been safe and possessed it then to be able to think of some words to comfort her, but his tongue was dry in his mouth and there was no shred of hope that he could offer.
“I’m not going to die! I won’t! I won’t! Help! Help! Help!” screamed Nicky down his useless telephone.
Vladimir released Camilla from his embrace, turned and struck out twice into the darkness behind him. He barked the knuckles of his right fist badly on the ice cold steel of the sphere but the left caught Nicky behind the ear. Suddenly his frantic gibbering ceased. He choked and slid down on to the body of the still unconscious gunman.
“Oh what have you done!” moaned Camilla.
“I could not wait by and see such behaving in your presence.” The Prince excused himself soberly then he added in a meditative way with no trace of laughter in his tone. “Often I have wished to kick that Nicky in his so colourful pants but never did I foresee this kicking with so little happiness to myself.”
‘Oh Vladimir—Vladimir,” Camilla suddenly reached up in the darkness and put her arms round his neck. “Can’t you do something—please, please—get us out of this.”
“Ah my so beautiful,” his deep vibrant voice held a soft caressing note. “If it were my life only—it would not be much to give but—but—what can I do?”
“We’re going to die,” said Sally again in that toneless whisper and the McKay felt her tremble as she leaned against him. He was still searching his mind desperately for one ray of hope when Vladimir exclaimed:
“The dynamite! All that we have let us drill into the rocks. The explosion beneath our bottoms may drive us sky high!”
“Absurd,” grunted the McKay. “The electric wires snapped with the cable,
so we can’t work the drill or explode the charges, and anyhow I doubt if there’s enough H.E. in Chatham to blow this ball up through five-thousand feet of water. Besides, even if one could perform such a miracle we’d only sink again immediately.
“Gnädige Hertzogin, Fraulein Sally. Herrshaft,” the German addressed them with his usual formality. “I make my apologies now to all. I haf trusted in the cable being able to withstand any strain and haf been proved in error. That was a miscalculation for which I too shall pay with my life since there is no help for us. One tank of oxygen will last forty-five minutes for eight people—an hour perhaps if we use it sparingly. There are twelve tanks but we have been down four hours and have used five and a half tanks already. The remaining six and a half tanks will keep alive the eight persons here six and a half hours only.”
“As a warship has come to our assistance—they may try to hook us up with their end of the cable,” muttered the McKay yet even as he spoke he realised the absurdity of the suggestion. If sufficient cable still remained attached to the drums for the broken end to reach the bottom the ship was still drifting and, since they had no means of communication, the chances were a thousand to one against the people above lowering the cable over the exact spot where the bathysphere had come to rest. Besides it would be the supreme irony of all if such an attempt succeeded. They were sealed and riveted into the sphere and had a great hook been dangling before the windows at that moment they would have been completely powerless to reach and attach it.
The Doctor shook his head. “All the ships in the world might be above but they could not help us in any way. We can do nothing—nothing but wait until death comes.”
“You are wrong, Doctor,” said Count Axel quietly. “A little manipulation of your instruments and we should barely live out another minute. Surely that would be more merciful to us all.”
The horrid silence came again as each debated with themselves if they should choose slow or instant death but it was was broken by Camilla almost immediately.
They Found Atlantis Page 22