by KW Jeter
I stepped past him and found myself gazing out over what seemed a limitless underground ocean. The light from my lantern glittered across its still surface and was lost in the distance. The waters were dark and covered with an oily scum interrupted by faintly luminous patches like algae.
"It's not as wide as it is deep," said Clagger behind me. "But to be sure, it's some fathoms to the bottom."
"How are we to get across then?" Wading was obviously impossible here.
"Don't worry yourself. There's ways of doing that easy enough. First I must test the air, though."
He had fastened his lantern to the end of his long probing pole, and he now stepped beside me with it. Slowly he extended it over the dark waters. The flame bent with some subterranean draft but remained burning brightly.
"Ah, good," said Clagger. "There's air fit for us to breathe out there. Sometimes the putrefying masses that lodge in the depths rise up and break open, releasing such noxious vapours as would suffocate you like a giant candle snuffer. It's good luck for us that such is not the case at the moment." He pulled back the pole and removed the lantern from the end. "Go back down the tunnel a couple of yards," he said, restrapping the lantern to his chest, "and on the right you'll find a section of the brickwork that's been replaced with a dirty piece of canvas. Draw it aside and bring what you find out here."
The piece of canvas at the point of which he directed me was not merely dirty, but artfully daubed with plaster and mud so as to resemble a section of the sewer passage itself. Drawing the camouflage aside, I found in the hollowed-out niche behind a small boat complete to a pair of oars resting in the brass fittings on the sides.
Tafe and I dragged the boat to the edge of the dark underground sea where Clagger stood waiting for us. He placed a loving hand on the prow of the little craft, looking for all the world like some British admiral admiring his fleet's flagship. "It got washed into the sewers," he said, "when an India clipper sank at the docks during a storm. Somehow it drifted down here where I found good employment for it. I've kept it hidden so that less cautious folk might not try their luck on yon water and find it wanting."
The boat was soon lowered into the water and one by one we cautiously took our places in it. Clagger manned the oars and pushed us away from the ledge where we had been standing. With a few strokes it was out of sight and we were surrounded by the fetid ocean on all sides.
"What happens," I asked with a little trepidation "if one of the putrid masses you spoke of breaks open and releases its fatal gas while we're crossing this body of water?"
"In that case," said Clagger, laying his weight into the oars, "you hold your breath and I row like hell." His impassive face made no show if this was meant as humorous or not. "And now, sir," he continued, "I must caution you to hold your voice in check. For I know well that sounds travel over still water with great clarity, and it behooves us to go as subtly as possible."
"Why so? Who is there to hear us?"
He looked at me reproachfully. "Do I have to remind you who they are who've made their base here in the sewers?"
The Morlocks! My heart clenched with the remembrance of them. I had been blind to the true danger of the depths through which we were roaming, so intently had my mind been focused on the object to which our pursuit was aimed. Not only were we braving the natural hazards of the underground but perhaps the malevolent scrutiny of our most implacable enemies as well. Suddenly the darkness around us seemed alive with unseen but sensed eyes taking the measure of our very inch of progress and calculating the best moment for some treacherous blow.
I barely managed to suppress my growing apprehension, not eliminating it but only pushing it into a corner of my mind. No course but this one lay before us – but to pursue it called for as much bravery as we possessed. So we sailed on, so far beneath the streets I had once blithely walked upon, moving across an uncharted sea toward an unknown destination.
At the back of the little boat Tafe sat with her head hanging over the side. Her restrained fear of the close spaces served to make the placid rowing into a rough crossing for her. I said nothing, knowing that her pride would flare into anger at any word of sympathy. Instead I turned and looked ahead to our not yet visible landing.
Suddenly she spoke. "I think something's coming up," came her voice from behind us.
"Just keep your head over the side," I said, not turning around. "I can't imagine a more fitting place in which to dispose of your last meal."
"No, you fool," said Tafe impatiently. "I mean coming up from down there."
Clagger stopped rowing. The boat rocked from side to side as I vaulted to a place next to Tafe and peered down into the inky water. A row of some dozen or more yellow lights was visible through the scum at a considerable distance below us. As I watched the lights grew larger and more distinct, indicating their gradual rise toward the surface.
"What can it be?" I asked Clagger as he appeared at my elbow.
"It looks worse even than anything I'd feared we'd encounter," he said, staring anxiously down into the water. "I'd heard rumours from some of the other toshers but I'd dismissed them as nonsense and arrant fabrications."
"What? You know what it is?"
"Yes." His voice was sepulchral – with foreboding. "The Morlocks have apparently placed a vessel for travelling underwater here to assist them in preparing for their invasion of the surface world."
The row of lights was ascending much faster toward us. "A submarine?" I said incredulously. "Such as Jules Verne imagined? The Morlocks are operating a submarine here beneath the city of London?"
"Aye," said Clagger, "that's the look of it, but I fancy we'll know for sure in a matter of a few seconds."
"The oars!" I pushed him back toward his position at the middle of the boat. "Row away!"
"Where to?" said Clagger despairingly. "Have you no eyes? That thing, whatever it is, is coming up faster than we could possibly move in any direction."
His words proved true. No sooner had he spoken them than our small craft was borne up by a swell of water, spun about, then capsized. With a shriek of expelled steam the submarine broke the surface while a churning weight of dark, filthy water pulled
at my limbs and plunged me far below.
I had had time to catch only a fraction of my breath in the few chaotic moments before my immersion. The feeling of suffocation was heightened by the complete darkness – the lamp strapped to my chest was of course extinguished – and the slimy, scum-filled water pressing upon me. Oily ropes of decaying matter clung to my limbs and entwined about me as I thrashed desperately in the wake of the emergent submarine. Clumps of foul debris plastered themselves to my face, while my body's desire to fill its aching lungs with air drove my mind to sheer animal panic. I clawed and kicked at the swirling dark mass about me, not knowing whether I was scrabbling toward the water's surface or deeper below. Once my hand struck that of another person – Tafe, probably – and our fingers clutched at each other for a second before the turbulent currents tore them apart again.
Just as my mouth was about to break open in a scream, not caring whether it might be choked off under fathoms of this lightless sea, my head lifted into the air above the surface. A draft of the thick, fetid atmosphere was as welcome to me as any clear spring breeze. I gasped, fell back under the surface, then kicked myself up again. Treading water, I looked about to see what I could of the disaster's aftermath.
There was not a sign observable in the total dark of my companions Tafe and Clagger. More disheartening, I could hear nothing of them struggling in the water or calling out to locate each other or myself. The sound of my own voice was weak and quickly swallowed up in the vast area. "Tafe!" I cried. "Clagger!"
No answer came. I was forced to assume that they were both drowned or swept away into some inaccessible part of the subterranean ocean beyond my powers of assistance.
The only thing offered to my senses at all was the sight of the submarine now wallowing several yards away
from me. What the function of the row of lights along its top was I could not guess; perhaps a signalling device of some kind. By their general illumination I could make out the details of the underwater vessel that had come upon us. An ovoid tapering to a point at both ends, it had indeed the baroque appearance of an illustration to one of Jules Verne's fantastic romances. Odd fins and propulsive devices jutted out at angles from the bolt-studded flanks. It lay without further motion in the slowly subsiding waters.
As my strength was quickly being exhausted by the effort of staying afloat in the cold water burdened as I was with my sodden clothes and Excalibur strapped to my back, I resolved to approach the submarine. Perhaps the Morlocks who piloted it now felt that their mission was accomplished in the sinking of our little boat and our deaths from drowning thereby. I could perhaps grasp one of the submarine's protuberances unseen and regather my strength until the vessel submerged again. Or if it stayed on the surface I could remain with it until it reached its home port, wherever that may be.
Beyond that I had no plan, only the faintest spark of hope kept alive by the weight of the clothwrapped sword across my shoulders. However diminished its state, Excalibur still inspired in me a bit of the courage of our heroic British ancestors, as well as that of my lost comrades. I couldn't let myself sink with it into the foul depths of the underground sea until my last ounce of will was gone. As noiselessly as possible, not letting my hands breach the water's surface, I swam toward the submarine.
I soon had hold of one of the fins near the vessel's waterline and managed to pull myself into a sitting position upon it, with only the lower part of my legs left dangling in the water. Pressing myself close to the hull, I could hear various scraping and scurrying noises inside. I took them to be the footsteps of the Morlocks and the incessant throbbing and clanking of the vessel's engine. A great exhaust of steam bubbled into the water from an aperture a few yards away from me, and I was grateful for the warmth it gave me. I could feel blood and life returning to my chilled limbs. Although my plight had not been improved a whit, a tiny bit more hope filtered through my irrational heart.
The submarine still had not moved from the point where it had erupted upon my late companions and myself. Was something amiss inside? The hurried noises that came to my ear through the metal seemed to grow more frantic, with the footsteps pounding back and forth from one end of the vessel to the other. The engine alternately roared or slowed almost to the point of stopping. Various propellers and fins dipped erratically in and out of the water. The one I was perched on tilted, but righted itself again before I could slide off. From a distance the foundering submarine might have given the bizarre impression of a giant sea turtle that had somehow lost the ability to coordinate its limbs.
My rapidly mounting suspicions about what was going on inside the vessel forced me now to revise my plans. I had saved myself from drowning by clinging to the submarine, but neither my lost companions, our overturned boat, nor any safe point to which I could swim had since appeared. The submarine gave no sign of progressing toward a landing, and was perhaps even in danger of inadvertently sinking. As the various noises banged through the hull like scrap metal in a dyspeptic mechanical oesophagus, I pondered my chances.
Finally, more from a lack of better ideas than anything else, I began to inch my way higher on the vessel. I had the vague notion that I could perhaps find a hatch or vent through which I could better discover the state of affairs inside. To what purpose I could put such knowledge I had no idea.
Using the various fins and propeller shafts for handles, I dragged myself to a point where I was lying prone upon the curved top surface, stretched between two of the glowing lights we had first spotted underwater. My calculations were at least partly correct. Through a tiny ventilator shaft with a cover that apparently closed with submersion in the water, I could hear distinctly the voices of the Morlocks inside. Their harsh gabbling was raised in argument – that much was clear, though I could understand none of the words. Volleys of scorn, accusation, contempt and other vocal passions sounded below me.
Had a mutiny split their ranks? I wondered. Their ferocious debate gave no sign of lessening, and the submarine's erratic twitches, meanwhile, continued. Perhaps, I hoped wildly, a fight would break out among them leading to a general slaughter, and I would be left the sole living tenant of the submarine. I dismissed the notion; it was too much to wish for.
So intent was I upon my eavesdropping that I almost didn't hear the slow opening of a hatchway behind me. Only when the circular metal door was thrown back upon its rasping hinges did I turn my head and see a pair of Morlocks come boiling out of the submarine's interior, their dead-white hands outstretched for me.
I leapt to my feet as they came scrambling across the hull toward me. Backing away as fast as I could upon the slippery metal, I interposed a large upright stanchion between myself and them. This brought me only a few second's grace, as I could see several more of their kind emerging from the open hatchway to join in the chase.
Hastily I decided to give up my position on the submarine. With no time to order my thoughts, I instinctively resolved that it would be better to swim or drown in the cold water than to be captured by the Morlocks and put to whatever filthy uses they could devise.
The curve of the submarine's hull was too great for me to clear if I tried to dive directly from it into the water. I quickly dropped to my stomach again and half-slid, half climbed down to the vessel's waterline. The hand of one of the Morlocks caught me by the collar of my jacket and stopped me from slipping into the water. I let go of the fin I was using as a handhold, grabbed his arm, then pulled him off his feet and in an arc over my head. I heard him collide with a spinning propeller, shriek as its blades tore at his flesh, then fall into the water.
More hands clutched at me from above, but I had slid far enough down the hull to be out of their easy grasp. A heavy iron bar whirred down toward my head. I twisted to one side and the weapon struck the submarine's metal flank with a dull clang. I turned my head away from my pursuers in order to spot the next foothold I needed for my descent.
A loop of rope fell across my throat and tightened in back of my neck. My hands flew to the noose in which one of the Morlocks had caught me, but it was already pressing into my flesh and cutting off my breath. I felt myself jerked back up the side of the submarine by the rope while the dimly lit waters grew even darker.
Hands I could no longer see grappled at me. I struck back in all directions, landing a few blows on their soft, clammy faces, until my weakened arms were at last forced behind me and tied with another section of rope. Gasping for air, with a spinning world roaring dizzily through my head, I felt myself dragged toward the submarine's hatchway.
7
Problems of Navigation
I came to, trussed up and tossed against a bulkhead. I had never gone completely unconscious, but the choking and rough handling from the Morlocks had quite dazed me. My body, if not all of my mind, remembered clearly being dropped down the hatchway ladder like a sack of potatoes. And then there had been much shouting and arguing in the Morlocks' harsh tongue, and their pale, brutish faces swimming through the black veil of blood that covered my eyes, peering at me, then disappearing again.
My head cleared a bit more as I shook it. Upon investigation I found that my back was to a large brass pipe that ran up to the submarine's curved roof, and that my hands were knotted securely behind me on the other side of the pipe. I experienced a brief flash of panic when I realised that the sword Excalibur was no longer strapped to my back. My fears were quickly assuaged, however, when I glanced about and saw the cloth-wrapped bundle, now sodden and stained from the underground ocean, lying a few feet away from me. The Morlocks had not troubled themselves to unwrap it to see what was inside.
The compartment in which I lay bound appeared to be the submarine's engine room. Several yards away was a maze of pipes and shafts, some covered with black grease, some glowing red with heat, all twist
ing and intertwined about the great cylindrical mass of the main boiler, from whose various gauges and apertures gouts of steam hissed out as though a covey of dragons had housed themselves in it. Long brass rods for the purpose of controlling the engine's valves and other parts were connected to the machinery by intricate systems of gears and chains, then led through metal rings on the ceiling toward the other end of the vessel.
At one time the submarine must have been a marvel of engineering such as no nation on the Earth's surface had ever possessed. Now, though, it was in a sorry state of neglect and abuse. The metal, where not covered with grease and dirt was all pitted and corroded. Several of the brass controlling rods were bent or stuck tight in the rusted metal rings that held them. The glass faces of the gauges on the engine were shattered or smeared over with grease, and the escaping steam from the engine fully indicated its leaky condition.
From all this, I surmised that the submarine was not originally the property of the Morlocks, that they had in fact come into possession of it by foul means, and were using it for their base purposes without thought of properly caring for it. Like most plunderers they took a general delight in seeing the goods of others degraded and trampled beneath their muddy boots.