They Found Atlantis lw-1

by Dennis Wheatley

  Even when Doctor Tisch appeared to tell them that the bathysphere had been sent down for a trial descent the announcement only roused them from their despondency for a moment. In their extreme preoccupation with the knowledge that, unless they could devise some way to outwit their captors, they were all to be shipped off to a desert island on the borders of the southern iceberg zone, where they would suffer moftths of acute distress, if not death— from exposure—they had forgotten all about Atlantis. With the exception of the McKay they had not even noticed consciously that the ship had left its anchorage off Horta in the previous night and now lay in the open sea, with the land only showing as a distant smudge on the horizon.

  Upon being reminded of the object which had brought them all on board their reaction was only an added fury that any enterprise so speculative should have lured them into this damnable trap, and they soon relapsed into their squirrel-like mental revolutions upon the now sickening subject of their uncertain future.

  After his swim the McKay joined Count Axel up in the bows of the vessel. 'Well,' he enquired with a smile, 'did sleep bring you inspiration?'

  The Count shrugged. 'No I confess myself at my wit's end. There are ways of course in which we could prevent Slinger leaving us in five days' time. Mussolini's for example which was used to prevent communist leaders from addressing public meetings when Italy very nearly went Red after the war—a pint of castor oil or its equivalent—that would lay him out for two or three days at least, but we couldn't put it into practice as long as he is accompanied by a couple of these gunmen each time he visits us. Have you had any ideas?'

  'Not a ghost of one,' lied the McKay.

  'Then it seems that we shall have to face a situation which I do not care to dwell upon. Think of these poor young women on the rock where we are to be left stranded. The hideous discomfort, the piercing cold of those southern regions. We may be there for a year before we are picked up by a passing vessel or can get away. I have few possessions but I would give them all to be assured that I am only dreaming of this colossal frame up.'

  'Yes, we're in it up to the neck,' the McKay agreed bitterly. He had had no brilliant brainwave for their salvation, only a simple almost automatic idea, for one of his training, which might, as an outside chance lead to their rescue. Having little faith in it himself he did not even consider it worth mentioning and entirely shared the Count's extreme anxiety.

  'The others don't know what they're in for yet,' he added thoughtfully, 'so best keep it from them till they have to face it for themselves. It would be no kindness to the women to cause them suffering in anticipation as to what we're likely to be up against this time next month; and I blamed myself afterwards for saying as much as I did when we had our conference yesterday. Unless we can detain Slinger I don't think there's the least chance of that will being set aside—do you? This bloke "Kate's" been a damn sight too clever for the lot of us.'

  'Yes, he must have worked everything out to the last detail, and if we move against Slinger or these gunmen we would just be asking to be shot. The whole affair must have been planned months back, that's why I hinted that the Doctor was in it, yesterday. What do you make of him?'

  'Oh, he's not a bad little cuss. Absolutely potty on this Atlantis business of course, but he's a genuine scientist all right. I looked up his record in the ship's library so I hardly think your theory about his being in with all these crooks can be right.'

  Count Axel smiled lazily. 'It is just because he is so potty —a monomaniac almost, one might say—about what he terms his life work of the rediscovery of the lost continent that I believe him to be involved. Such expeditions as this are very costly you know and it is not easy to find anyone with sufficient money to finance them. Most capitalists who could afford to do so are hard-headed business men requiring a definite return for such an outlay. The uncertainty of actually securing gold from the venture would bar it out except in the case of a limited few. Farquason was such a one. A man of great vision who knew how to apply his dreams to modern commercial undertakings, and when he had made big money he was willing to apply that to the realisation of dreams which might bring no financial reward.

  'Unfortunately he dreamed once too often. He will come back again of course, such men always do, but in the meantime he's had a nasty set-back and had to leave the Doctor in the lurch. Honestly I believe that Slinger or his Chief heard of the Doctor's project in Paris and j the plight in which Farquason had left him, then tempted him to bring this ship down to Madeira by a promise that if he kept his eyes and mouth shut they would enable him to continue with this work in which he is so passionately interested.'

  'If you are right we should be well advised to exclude him from our councils.'

  'Certainly. Except in the case of some plan which necessitates an open united attack I think it would be wise if we all kept our own counsel for the moment.' Count Axel also had a germ of a scheme already in his mind which was too vague for him to wish to share until he had had further time to deliberate upon it.

  'However,' he added blandly, 'I believe the Doctor to be more sinned against than sinning. He could not possibly have suspected their intention of shipping us, and him, down to the Falklands. Consequently he is probably almost as much at his wit's end as we are now and would do anything he possibly could to help us. You see if my theory is right they've tricked him too and he would commit murder rather than be robbed of his great chance to rediscover Atlantis.'

  'You really do believe in Atlantis then? Surely if the Doctor is in with Slinger's gang that adds enormously to the supposition that it's only a myth and that they've utilised the old story to bait in an exceedingly clever job.'

  'No, my dear Captain. There you are wrong. That is just where these people have been so diabolically cunning. The Doctor is in dead earnest regarding his Atlantis theory so they made use of his fanatical conviction about it to induce Camilla and her friends to come on board this ship. Believe me, so certain am I that the Doctor is right, that if I had a million, and we had some unquestionable manner in which we could prove our bet, 1 would wager you nine-tenths of it that the land once trodden by living Atlanteans now lies beneath our feet.

  'You know where we are then?'

  'Yes. I was so perturbed by what had taken place that I hardly realised the ship had left Horta until we had been under steam for the best part of an hour but I looked out of my porthole then and saw from the stars that we were moving East South East. Unless I am completely astray, that smudge of land which we can still see to the north-west now must be the south-east point of Pico Island.'

  'That's it,' agreed the McKay. 'I took a look at the stars myself immediately the ship got under way and I'm able to verify the outline of Pico because, although it's years ago now, I've sailed before in these waters. You heard that the bathysphere had been sent down to the bottom?'

  'Yes, they are reeling it in now. It took one hour and forty-four minutes going down. 5,168 feet the Doctor told me. I can hardly contain my impatience to learn if it reaches the surface again intact. So much depends on that.'

  'Getting on for nine-hundred fathoms, eh? The pressure must be something tremendous at that depth. Do you mean to chance going down there if the test has proved satisfactory?'

  'Certainly. I would not forgo the possibility of being among the first to behold these remains which have been under water for over eleven thousand years for anything in the world—not even to be free of this ghastly threat of being marooned on the Falkland Islands afterwards.'

  The McKay shrugged his square shoulders. 'Well, each man has his particular kind of fun, but I can't see how you really believe in this old wives' tale. How could such tremendous destruction have taken place in one upheaval? It isn't reasonable.'

  'My dear Captain, the site of Atlantis is the very centre of an earthquake region. The nearest coast to it is that of Portugal and it was there that the greatest earthquake of modern times occurred. In Lisbon on the first of November 1775 the sound of thun
der was heard underground and immediately afterwards a violent shock threw down the greater part of the city. In six minutes 60,000 persons perished. The entire harbour, built of solid marble, sank down with hundreds of people on it and not one of their bodies ever floated to the surface. A score of great vessels were instantaneously engulfed and disappeared with all their crews as though they had never existed. No trace of them has ever been found since and the water in the place where the fine quay once stood is now five-hundred feet deep.'

  'That's terrible enough I grant you, but it was a local calamity.*

  'How about the frightful eruptions which devastated the island of Sumbawa, east of Java, in 1815 then? The sound of the explosion was heard for nearly a thousand miles and, in one province, out of a population of 12,000, only twenty-six people escaped with their lives. Whirlwinds carried up men, horses and cattle into the air, tore up the largest trees by the roots and covered the whole sea with ashes and floating timber. The darkness in daytime was as profound as the blackest night and the area covered by the convulsion was 1,000 English miles in circumference. I tell you the accounts of the Flood in our Bible and the Mexicans' sacred book—the Popul Vuh—which are almost identical, are not myths at all but actual records of an historical occurrence; and every indication of the locality in which it took place points to Atlantis. Take the island of Dominica in the Leeward group of the West Indies—the nearest land to the south-west of where the lost continent is believed to have been. That too is full of hot springs and in 1880 there was an eruption there of such magnitude that it rained mud in the streets of Roseau, miles from the centre of the disturbance, and simultaneously there was a cloudburst out of which great gouts of water came streaming from the sky. To read the description of it is to picture an exact replica, upon a minor scale, of the Flood described in Genesis where on the same day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened...'

  'All right Count—all right. That's quite enough!' The McKay put up his hands in mock surrender. 'I only wish to God that they were sending us to Dominica instead of to the Falklands. It's a charming climate and I had a friend there once—but that's another story.'

  Count Axel smiled. 'Well, believe me or not I am absolutely convinced that Atlantis once existed and that we are now floating above the site it occupied. We may find nothing. Thousands of tons of ashes and volcanic lava may have buried its great buildings before they sank. The ocear bed changes and shifts through submarine eruptions from time to time but if the Atlanteans had pyramids as large and solid as those of Egypt or Mexico the remains of such mighty structures can hardly have disappeared like the flimsy hutments of a native village or even Lisbon's docks, so there is at least a fair chance of our finding them. In any case the search will serve to distract my mind from the damnable fate which appears to have been allotted to us for our very near future.'

  'You're right, and the descents will help to take Camilla's thoughts off this devilish business of losing all her money too, 1 hope. However, I prefer to relieve my anxieties by an occasional swim with Sally.'

  By half-past twelve, after a submergence of nearly three and a half hours, during nearly the whole of which period it had been travelling either down or up at the rate of a hundred feet every two minutes, the bathysphere reached the surface again.

  To Doctor Tisch's overwhelming joy it had withstood the gigantic pressure at 5,000 feet and showed no trace of the strain which must have been placed upon it. Round, solid, its fused quartz portholes projected from its sides like a row of stumpy cannons, uncracked, unscarred, it appeared above the waterline exactly as it had been sent down. As soon as its weighty door had been lifted off a rapid survey of its interior revealed that all was well, and no more water had collected in its sump than was to be expected from the condensation natural during three and a half hours submergence.

  Frantic with excitement the Doctor came forward to report his news; and his enthusiasm was so infectious that it galvanised the despondent prisoners into some display of interest.

  He said that he was going down at once since he could suffer not a moment's delay in making the first trip to the ocean bottom in this area that had so long held his imagination. That it was over 800 fathoms down and nearly twice the depth that any human being had ever been before troubled him not at all. If any of the others wished to accompany him Slinger had no objection to their doing so, he said; but they must make up their minds and be quick about it.

  Camilla jumped up without the slightest hesitation. Her previous experience of the marvels to be seen on a deep sea dive had whetted her appetite for more. Count Axel stepped quickly to her side.

  'Come on Sally—why don't you,' Camilla cried. 'It's so 122

  utterly thrilling to see all the wonderful things down there that one just forgets to be frightened the second the ball's beneath the surface.'

  'All right,' Sally stood up a little slowly. 'I'll come.'

  Vladimir shrugged his broad shoulders. 'If we are to stand twiddling our toes instead of combating our distresses we can do it as well under sea, so I join you.'

  'What about you, Nicky?' Camilla glanced at the slim handsome young man who was wearing again his startling sky blue flannel suit.

  'No thanks.' Nicky shook his head. 'If we're going to start playing games again just as though we had no cause to worry ourselves sick I'd rather take on the McKay at deck tennis—if he still doesn't care for the idea of going down.'

  'I'm your man Nicky,' replied the McKay promptly. 'Let's go and see all these folk safely locked into their padded cell, then we'll amuse ourselves by chucking bits of rope at each other—it's less dangerous.'

  'Come please,' said the Doctor impatiently.

  Ten minutes later the two girls, Axel, Vladimir, the Doctor and his little seedy-looking telephonist Oscar were inside the bathysphere and the bolts which secured the heavy door were being hammered home.

  The McKay and Nicky had been allowed aft by the gunmen for the purpose of seeing the others off, and now they were leaning side by side over the rail. No one else was near them and under cover of the din Nicky said suddenly:

  'Look here. I'm worried stiff over this hold up. What d'you think the chances are of that bird Kate slipping up over the will?'

  'Not a hope in hell,' replied the McKay tersely. He was not feeling too civil at the moment having just failed in an attempt to dissuade Sally from going down in the bathysphere.

  'Wish to God we could figure out some way of fixing Slinger,' Nicky went on meditatively.

  'So do I, but as long as he always moves round with those two toughs in tow how the deuce can we get at him?'

  'We've darn well got to start something before the week's out. I got all the dope I could about these Falklands from a book in the ship's library last night and it sounds just one hell of a place to me.'

  'It is,' agreed the McKay. 'Still I'd rather sit on the rocks there for six months than go down in that bathysphere.'

  'Would you? By jingo I wouldn't. The risk isn't all that great.'

  'I mean go down in it regularly as the Doctor, Axel, and Camilla propose to do. I wouldn't jib at a single trip if I thought it would get us out of the clutches of these toughs. But sooner or later there's going to be a hitch somewhere, it will bust or they won't be able to get it up and I'd rather be smoking dried seaweed in the Falklands than in it when that happens.'

  'Well—there she goes.' Nicky waved his hand as the great crane rattled and the bathysphere sank under the surface, 'What about that game of deck tennis?'

  The McKay grinned. 'Right-ho! m'lad, such simple sports are infinitely preferable to an old man like me.'

  Inside the sphere, Sally clenched her hands and held her breath for ten seconds as the circular chamber slid under water. Staring upwards through one of the portholes she caught a glimpse of the surface from below. It looked infinitely calmer seen thus than from above where the wavelets chopped and splashed even on this calm day—just a quilted
canopy of palish green dappled by constantly shifting patches of bright sunshine—then they slid downwards halting for the first tie to be made, attaching the hose containing the electric wires to the cables, at fifty feet.

  The silence seemed uncanny. Somehow she had expected to hear the constant rippling and splashing of the waves down there but there was not a sound. Strange as she felt it to be, too, the water did not seem to be wet any more. It was just as though she was staring into a solid block of pale greeny blue glass. Not a ripple or refraction gave the faintest suggestion of moisture and it was diamond clear instead of cloudy as she had imagined it to be.

  Suddenly a three foot barracuda, that devil of the shallows, for whose attacks on bathers sharks are so often blamed, swam into the orbit of her vision. He paused for a moment to stare at the bathysphere and not the faintest movement except the slow champing of his horrid hinged jaws showed that he was alive instead of frozen into a great block of transparent, light greeny-blue ice. One flick of his tail and he was gone, yet no tremor of the water that he thrust from him with such vigour disturbed the glassy blankness in his wake.

  Just as the bathysphere moved again two green moray eels slid by, then they passed a cloud of sea snails and a big jelly. As Camilla had done before her Sally forgot her fears and sat, her eyes rivetted on the window, enthralled by this ever-changing panorama of life and colour.

  The red and orange had faded from the light. Only a palish tinge of yellow now suggested the sunshine above the surface and the green was already being displaced by the vivid brilliant blue. After their third stop, at 450 feet no colour remained but the unearthly bluish radiance which filled them all with a strange feeling of vitality and lent their senses abnormal powers of vivid perception.