They Found Atlantis

by Dennis Wheatley

  Time passed. The air became thin and rarified. It was as difficult to draw sufficient into their lungs as if they had been locked up for hours in the dry heat of the hottest room in a Turkish bath. Camilla said nothing but she had an awful feeling that instead of being about to faint again she was really dying now. She tried desperately hard to keep herself upright but her body suddenly went limp and she fell forward in a crumpled heap. Vladimir saw her and motioned to Bozo to take his place then, as the gunman crawled painfully forward, he lifted Camilla tenderly in his arms, kissed her gently on the cheek, and propped her up against the side of the sphere next to the oxygen tanks where she would reap the benefit of more than her fair share of their precious supply.

  After two hours and a half they had cleared the second lot of machinery and begun on the third floor, but the air had become positively stifling. Their breath came in quick short pants and an examination of the oxygen tanks showed that even with the reduced supply they had only three quarters of an hour to go. Another hour and they would certainly all be dead.

  “We’ve got to get out—we’ve got to!” wheezed the McKay, “Come on Doctor—your turn now.”

  The Doctor roused himself, wiped the sweat from his face and rolled over, then set to work again with a sudden spurt of energy. Nicky, whom he had just relieved, managed to reach the back of the sphere and then collapsed.

  The McKay felt his fingers grow numb and clumsy. He hated the idea of giving up but knew that he must have another spell of rest, otherwise he would be delaying progress. He muttered to Bozo who took his place. The gunman’s thick blunt hands were trembling and the sight of his slowness almost drove the McKay to a frenzy, but he worked doggedly at the job and his tools never slipped.

  By the time they’d got the third floor up Count Axel knew from a quick glance at his watch that their limit of life was now reduced to a quarter of an hour. Without reference to the McKay he turned the oxygen valve a fraction lower—even another two minutes might mean the difference between safety and death, but if he could have seen the work still to be done from where he crouched behind the others, he would not have bothered.

  A fresh barrier confronted them. Great reels of electric wires for exploding detonators from several hundred feet above the ocean bed—masses of springs and interlocking levers. The Doctor groaned but he and Bozo laboured on.

  Their heads ached appallingly, their eyes seemed about to burst from their sockets, their tongues were swollen to almost double their normal size and filled their mouths so that they had to keep them wide open as they fought for the last breaths of oxygen.

  Sally’s torch slipped from her hand, smashed on the steel floor and went out. Then she slid to her knees and fell backwards. Bozo was the next to go. He had never fully recovered from the blow which Vladimir had given him eight hours before, soon after the cable had snapped, and now he just toppled over sideways like a shot rabbit.

  Vladimir reached backwards and shook the Count out of his semi torpor, then he pulled Bozo away from the mass of levers that still faced them and took his place. Axel crawled over the prostrate bodies and lit the workers with his torch.

  The next to go was the doctor. He had succeeded in freeing one of the big reels of wire so that they could actually see the last floor now, beyond which was the life-giving air. With a great effort he lifted the reel and, turning, placed it on Sally’s chest, then without a murmur he fell forward senseless across her legs. The McKay picked up the spanner he had dropped.

  It was now a nightmare scene. Enfeebled almost to fainting point from lack of air, the McKay and Vladimir still struggled with the many struts; Count Axel held the torch; while behind, five limp unconscious bodies lay huddled in grotesque and horrible disarray.

  About eighteen inches square of the last floor was clear but the McKay knew now that he had failed. A dozen jutting rods had still to be removed before the smallest of them could force their way through the gap, and they were so weak that the floor itself would take another hour’s work to get up. The oxygen was all but finished and death hovered waiting, in the shadows of the sphere to touch them on the shoulder.

  He no longer had the strength for rapid action but he turned and whispered painfully:

  “Count—dynamite—on your—knees.” He knew that what he was going to do was the most desperate hazard—they might all be blown to fragments, but what did that matter. Still there was a fraction less chance of the dynamite exploding through concussion if it were removed from contact with the surface of the sphere.

  As Count Axel exerted all his remaining strength to lift the box the McKay laid his hand on Vladimir’s arm. “Give me—your—gun.”

  With slow fumbling fingers Vladimir pulled it from his pocket and passed it over.

  The McKay took it and, as Count Axel focused the light again, he lifted it. The weapon seemed to weigh a ton, but he brought it up to a line where two of the bottom plates in the last floor were jointed—and fired.

  In the confined space of the air-tight sphere the succession of explosions sounded as though a whole munition works was blowing up. For a second the McKay thought that, as he had feared, the shock of the vibration had set off the detonators. The automatic had dropped from his hand. The crash seemed to have burst his ear-drums. Vladimir was gasping out something but he could no longer hear.

  He swayed feebly, peering through the little cloud of smoke that obscured the remaining machinery. Count Axel’s arm was resting on his shoulder, still holding the torch. No hoped-for hole showed in the plates, only an irregular round dent on the joint that he had aimed at. It seemed now that their last hope had gone.

  As the McKay crouched there, the echoes of the shots still reverberating in his ears, his head singing and whirling, his eyes suffused with blood, Vladimir picked up a heavy lever—the last that they had removed. Gripping it with both hands he lurched forward, his strength gone but his great weight behind the stabbing blow with which he jabbed the dented surface.

  The bullets from the automatic had sprung the plates a trifle and Vladimir’s last desperate effort completed the work. They only parted the sixteenth of an inch but an insistent hissing came like the sound of angels’ music and they knew that the air was coming through.

  For over an hour the McKay, Vladimir and Count Axel lay utterly exhausted and semi comatose, then they began to revive and one by one resuscitated the others. The air was still stifling hot, oppressive, and lifeless but it was just breathable, so they got to work again on the bottom of the sphere.

  They took their time now; an hour and a quarter elapsed before they cleared the machinery and had removed sufficient plates in the last floor to crawl through.

  The bottom of the sphere was tilted towards the harbour floor but, to their surprise, it was completely clear of fish. Hardly a trace remained of that mass of creatures which had flooded the whole space between the quayside and the sphere six hours before. The surface was just awash with a few inches of clear water.

  Through the portholes they examined the quay. The great mob of greyish-white half-men were still there—all seated now on their haunches, peering blindly out of their almost colourless eyes in the direction of the bathysphere.

  “I do not like the look of these people,” said the Doctor heavily.

  The McKay shrugged. “I’m afraid we’ve got to chance what they think of us. We can’t stay here.”

  “How long is it since we left the ship now?” asked Camilla.

  After glancing at his watch Count Axel replied: “We went down at 8.45, Madame. It is now 11.30 at night, so it is nearly fifteen hours and we survived nine of those hours on our remaining oxygen after we were cut off.” Before returning the watch to his pocket he methodically wound it up.

  “Really?” Camilla’s voice conveyed surprise and she added despondently, “It seems as though it was at least a week.”

  “I am a fasting man,” declared Vladimir, “and would eat any old kipper that these so loathsome people can provide.”


  Sally sighed. “Need we go yet? There is our picnic lunch still that we’ve never had time even to think of eating. I’m so dead beat that I could drop. Can’t we sleep here through the night?”

  “Sorry m’dear,” the McKay laid his hand gently on her arm, “I’m afraid we can’t. Heaven alone knows what really happened to us but, as I see it, the sphere got caught in some sort of trawl and was dragged among these people’s catch through a succession of locks which prevent this place being flooded. Anyhow, at any moment some flood gate may open and disgorge another haul. The crowd on the quay are probably sitting waiting for their next meal to arrive. If we remain here we may get caught in the sphere again—only next time, owing to the hole we’ve made in it—we’ll all be drowned for certain.”

  “The McKay is right,” urged Count Axel, “and right too in his theory about the manner of our arrival here. Do you remember how gently we came to rest each time we sank to a lower level. We were probably falling down some deep, narrow shafts in which the catch of fish was packed so tightly together that those under us acted like a feather bed as we approached the bottom. Our briefer sideways movements were perhaps when we were being dragged through tunnels which form the actual locks beyond each of which the pressure of water above lessens.”

  “These people look so revolting,” demurred Camilla. “It seems absurd in the face of what we’ve gone through—but somehow I’d much rather stay in the old sphere a bit longer.”

  “We daren’t risk it,” the McKay insisted. “We’d have to abandon ship in any case in a few hours when our food and drink runs out, even if there were no danger of being engulfed by another mass of fish. I don’t want to be unkind but just imagine that is going to happen in above five minutes’ time and that as the water gushes up through the opening we’ve made, an octopus reaches in one of his tentacles to get you.”

  “You brute! Aren’t things bad enough?” murmured Sally.

  “No, honestly—however doubtful the future looks it will be a better bet once we’re out of this and up on the wharf.”

  The Doctor nodded. “The Herr Kapitan speaks sense Fraulein and although these people are primitive beyond belief they may prove hospitable. One thing is certain—they will be more frightened of us than we of them.”

  Sally looked at Camilla, who nodded faintly. “All right,” she said, “do as you wish,” and so the matter was agreed.

  A hasty meal was made, to keep up their strength, of half the picnic lunch. The remaining torches were distributed and every tool or item which might possibly be of use later, apportioned out amongst them.

  The McKay still had the automatic; four bullets remained in it and he reloaded to capacity from Bozo’s only spare clip, so that he had eight in the magazine and one in the chamber with a last reload of a further three in his pocket.

  He picked up a three-foot steel bar with a big joint at its end from the dump at the back of the sphere as an additional weapon. The others, including the girls, armed themselves with suitable pieces of the machinery which had been removed from the bottom of the sphere in such desperate haste.

  “Ready?” asked the McKay.

  A murmur of assent went up.

  “All right then,” he grinned for the first time since he had left the ship; “it’s just on midnight and a very appropriate hour to step ashore in an unknown land like this. Come on, help me through the hole some of you.”

  Legs foremost they pushed him through and his feet splashed into the shallow water. Immediately he was standing upright they passed through his pistol, torch and steel bar. He thrust the latter through his braces like an awkward blunt sword, and began at once to take closer stock of his surroundings.

  The torch showed him that they were in a lofty cavern—the roof was just visible. The wall opposite the quay reached sheer up to it—the extremities on either hand he could not see; he turned the beam on the quay.

  It was of solid, well-built, even masonry and, above it, he saw at once that, whether they were blind or not, some sense had warned the half-men that he had left the sphere. Everyone of the grey-white mob had risen and was staring at him with pale, blank, apparently sightless eyes.

  “Hello there!” he called, waving the hand that held the torch in greeting, and holding his pistol ready with the other.

  The response was instantaneous. Countless shrill voices broke into piercing cries, a thousand arms lifted—and a thousand stones were hurled in the direction of the sphere.

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE KINGDOM OF THE DAMNED

  If those hundreds of nude grey-white figures on the quayside had been able to see the thing at which they aimed their missiles the McKay would never have survived that moment. It was too late for him to attempt wriggling back through the bottom of the sphere. He could only slip to his knees beside the under-carriage and fling his arms above his head.

  The stones, so wildly thrown by the blind sub-humans, came whizzing down for fifty feet all round him. Half a hundred clanged on the bathysphere and, for a moment, it rang under them like some huge gong. The shallow water about it was churned to splashing wavelets as the missiles clattered on the harbour floor but the McKay, partly protected by the under-carriage, was only hit by half a dozen.

  One large one landed on his elbow and gave him momentary but exquisite pain, another caught him on the thigh. The rest were smaller and bounded off his body like a series of half-spent blows.

  Immediately the hail of stones had ceased he sprang to his feet and, before the submen had time to follow up their assault, thrust his head and arms inside the sphere.

  “Haul me in—quick!” he cried.

  Willing hands grabbed at his shoulders and he wriggled violently. An irregular shower of stones began to fall again, but after a moment’s tussle, he was pulled into safety.

  “By Jove! That was a narrow squeak,” he panted as soon as he could speak. “If those brutes weren’t blind they would have pounded me to pulp.”

  “My dear—are you hurt?” Sally put her arm round his shoulders anxiously. The din from the stones ringing on the sphere was so great now its bottom was open that she had to shout to make herself heard.

  “They got me on the elbow and the thigh, but it’s nothing much,” he shouted back. “Now listen—all of you. We’ve proved them hostile so we’ve got to make a plan of attack.”

  The clamour lessened. Evidently some sense told the sub-men that their unseen enemy had escaped.

  “Oh, can’t we stay here,” Camilla pleaded, “anyhow for a bit.”

  “No, that’s impossible. We’ll only be trapped or driven out eventually by starvation. We’ve got to establish ourselves on that quay, somehow, and as soon as possible.”

  Nicky was holding a torch to one of the portholes and peering out; “There seem to be such hundreds of them,” he said in a low scared voice.

  “Yes,” the McKay agreed. “Their numbers are difficult to estimate with no more light than the beam of a torch—but they’re packed so tightly that I should think there must be fully a thousand on the quay. What are they doing now?”

  “Crouching again in a great huddle just as they were before you went outside. They’re gibbering like mad too—as if they were scared to death—you can hear them if you listen.”

  As Nicky ceased speaking the party inside the sphere all heard the shrill excited twittering which came from the quay. It sounded like a flock of frightened birds.

  “They have much fear of us I am certain,” the Doctor announced, “if only they could see that we would be friends.”

  “Well, unfortunately they can’t,” the McKay spoke abruptly, “and we’re not going to have much chance to show them we mean no harm if they’re going to pelt us each time we put our heads outside the sphere.”

  “Ach, fear!” sighed the Doctor, “fear without reason—that is the cause of half the misery in the world. We are afraid of them because they are so numerous. They are afraid of us because they cannot see and believe us to be s
ome dreadful monster which has become entangled in their catch. Therefore we must fight and maim each other—it is horrible!”

  Count Axel nodded. “Yes—it’s sad. But it’s their lives or ours and, although they outnumber us by a hundred to one, we, at least, have dynamite.”

  “Get it out, Count,” ordered the McKay, “and the detonators. We must try to fix up some bombs to make a really telling demonstration.”

  The two of them set to work with the Doctor. The others could not help, except by holding lights, as they had no knowledge of explosives but, after half an hour a dozen large grenades had been manufactured encased in various portions of the now useless instruments which they stripped from the walls of the sphere.

  “The next thing is to protect ourselves—” The McKay flashed his torch round. “What have we got here that might be useful?”

  “We can use the canvas chair-seats as head covers,” suggested Axel, “and the bottom boards could be converted into rough shields perhaps.”

  “Good for you, Count—let’s get to it.”

  Soon they were all busy. The girls had no needles or thread but they twisted and tied the squares of canvas, as well as they could, into conical helmets which would serve to shield their heads a little from the stones since, with the exception of Bozo, who had refused to be parted from his dark felt, they had all gone down without their hats.

  Sally invented a special model, which met with much approval, by utilising some broad strips of canvas which had formed the chair arms, as chin straps. These served to bandage the cheeks as well as to keep the rough helmets on their heads.

  The men worked at the bottom boards, using the wire which was on the detonator reels instead of leather, to make an armlet for each. The boards were only about eight inches wide but, when the left forearm was slipped through the wire loop, they formed long narrow shields, which would at least protect the users’ faces.

  “Now,” said the McKay, when all was done, “this is the order of our going. You’ll slip me out quietly and I’ll have another shot at parleying with these people—although I don’t think for a moment that it will be any good. Any more stone throwing and I’m chucking a few of these bombs up on to the quay. The moment you hear them explode—out you come. Get that?”