The Doctor adjusted the oxygen flow a trifle, to exactly six litres a minute, a litre per head for each person in the bathysphere. The weedy telephonist muttered into his instrument keeping in constant touch with his opposite number above in the ship.
As they descended a constant procession of living creatures seemed to be sailing upward before the windows; prawns, squids, clouds of fry, jellies, strings of syphono-phores, shrimps, sea snails and beautifully coloured fish of every size and variety.
Gradually the intense blue light darkened to violet, then a deep navy blue, blue black, and black only tinged with grey. Fish, jellies and squids carrying their own illuminations made the portholes like the eye of a kaleidoscope at the end of which were constantly shifting dots of many colours. At 1,200 feet the Doctor switched on the searchlight. Its powerful beam cut an arc of weak yellow light through the dark waters and at its extremity there seemed to be a turquoise coloured cap. A scimitar mouth was outlined in the very centre of the beam, it remained there absolutely immobile, as though it was only a painted plaster cast, showing as little reaction to the sudden blinding light as if it had no consciousness of it.
When the bathysphere hung steady at 1,850 feet for one of the ties to be attached above, a school of Rainbow Gars came swimming by. They were small slim fish no more than four inches from nose to tail with long snapper-like jaws. Their elongated heads were a brilliant scarlet, behind the gills their bodies turned to a bright blue which merged through a suggestion of green into clear yelow at the tail. No cloud of brilliant hued butterflies fluttering through a tropical forest could have been more beautiful.
At 2,050 feet the Doctor switched out the light. 'We enter now,' he said, 'the region where it is forever night.'
Not the faintest suspicion of greyness now lightened the appalling blackness of the waters. It was night indeed, but night such as they had never known. They felt that never again would the darkness of the upper world be real darkness as they understood it now. This was the utter solid blackness of the pit; that final blotting out of the life rays without which every plant and tree and animal and human must surely die.
'Put on the light—put on the light,' cried Camilla suddenly, and for a second, before the Doctor found the switch, the fear which vibrated in her voice stirred a responsive chord in the emotions of them all, for they were now in one of those inexplicable patches, quite blank of life, so no glimmer from any luminous fish came to bring them reassurance. Land life cannot live below high water mark; or the shore life of seaweeds, shell fish, and rock dwellers, below the limit of the water covered slopes where the sun's light still penetrates; but living things, and those the strangest to us in all creation, still grew, and generated and fought and died by the million all about them and, when they dropped still further and passed the 2,200 level a fantastic variety of fresh wonders held their gaze.
The path of the searchlight had now lost its yellow tone and become a luminous grey; the cap of turquoise colour at its extremity seemed brighter and nearer in, yet they judged that they could see by its concentrated power of 3,000 watts a good sixty feet from the portholes. Outside its edge a variety of coloured lights moved constantly while hatchet fish, anglers, and fearsome looking squids with waving tentacles, pulsed slowly through the path of electric rays.
As they were passing 2,500 feet a queer lightless brute, the colour of dead, water-soaked flesh, toothless and with high vertical fins on its hinder part but only a round knob for a tail, came into view.
'This inhabitant of deep seas Dr. William Beebe has named the Palid Sailfin,' announced Doctor Tisch.
At 2,800 feet a monster passed. Twenty-five feet in length at least, oval in shape, monochrome in colour, and lacking both eyes and fins, a strange beast, unnamed, unknown to science. Some species of whale perhaps since nature has provided the whale with the amazing faculty of changing the chemical consistency of its blood which enables it to resist the gigantic pressures of great depths and, although a mammal, become capable, as has been proved, of diving a distance of a mile below the surface.
A moment later the sphere was halted for its next tie and the searchlight came to rest on an unbelievably gorgeous creature. It was an almost round fish with high continuous vertical fins, a big eye and a medium mouth. Its skin was brownish but along the sides of the body ran five fantastically beautiful lines of light, one equatorial and the others curved two above and two below. Each line was composed of a series of large, pale yellow lights and every one of these was surrounded by a circle of very small but intensely purple photophores. It turned and showed a narrow profile like a turbot, then swam away.
'Schon—schori,' murmured the Doctor. 'That beauty Doctor Beebe has named the Fivelined Constellation Fish.'
At 3,200 feet the path cut by the searchlight had changed again. The turquoise cap had come right down to the very windows of the sphere yet they could still see distinctly for a considerable distance by its bright blue light. Along each side of the sharply marked beam appeared a broad border of rich velvety dark blue and outside this an indescribable blackness, which could almost be felt, made straining eyes as useless as total blindness.
'Lower than this no human has ever been,' Doctor Tisch announced with satisfaction yet just a touch of awe. •William Beebe has only reached 3,028 feet. He is the pioneer who has made this journey possible for us and others who will come after. Later, perhaps, men will gather from the ocean beds fortunes of great size. Cortez brought home to Spain the wealth of Mexico. Pizzaro also brought back for his country the riches of Peru, but these names are not to us as the name of Christopher Columbus who was the first discoverer of the New World. When many years have gone the name of William Beebe will receive much honour and retain it for such time as our civilisation shall last. He also has opened up a New World for mankind. The pressure here is more than half a ton on each square inch of bathysphere but our instruments show all is as it should be. Where Beebe led we have follow satisfactorily—now we ourselves pass on. Oscar we are ready to go lower again.'
The little telephonist muttered into his mouthpiece. The bathysphere sank further into the depths.
Suddenly the Prince leaned forward in his seat behind Camilla and kissed her on the curve of the neck.
'Vladimir!' she exclaimed with a start.
He chuckled. 'Am I Columbus—no. Am I Beebe—no, but I am the first to make kissings with the so beautiful lady I love at such deeps under sea.'
Camilla preened herself a little. 'You are a dear,' she murmured, 'but you shouldn't you know. Just look at those marvellous lights.
Irregular formations of every hue were playing in the dark areas outside the beam and Doctor Tisch cut it off. For a further 800 feet they remained in the tense black darkness watching the fascinating display which now lit the windows. Angler fish came and went each with one to five lanterns bobbing from long rod-like fins upon their heads and sides. Stylophthalmas passed with luminous eyes on stalks one third as long as their entire bodies. Once Sally started back with a little cry of fright as some unknown organism collided with the port through which she was watching and burst like a firework into a thousand sparks, but immediately afterwards her entire attention was distracted by a single large dull green light as big as a cricket ball which went slowly past.
At 4,000 feet the Doctor switched on the light again and they saw their first great octopus, a parrot beaked creature with huge unwinking eyes and waving tentacles more than twenty feet in length. Instantly Tisch snapped out the light.
'He will not see us without lights,' he remarked with unnatural calm. 'Specimens of such size might be a danger if they believe our sphere to be some dead organism.'
For a moment Count Axel's vivid imagination conjured up the picture of a giant octopus wrapping its tentacles round the bathysphere and, by its added weight making it impossible for the machinery of the crane ever to draw them up again, but second thought reassured him. When the creature found the steel ball too solid for its beak and qu
ite inedible it would drop off and he knew from conversations with the Doctor that the cable could withstand twenty times the bathysphere's submerged weight. Nothing but the terrific jerk of flinging the crane into reverse when the sphere was running out at full speed, which it was never allowed to do, could possibly snap it, so they were safe enough unless attacked by some monster of undreamed of size.
When they had slipped down another few hundred feet the light was put on once more and nothing more terrifying appeared than a large eel with a couple of its slim transparent ghost-like larvae. Then at 4,800 feet the extremity of the light beam seemed to dim and they realised with a sudden tightening of their muscles that some gigantic fish was passing. Unlit, the colour of dead water-soaked flesh, like the Palid Sailfin it glided by, its shape unguessed since the searchlight showed no more of it than a rapid glimpse of its side, which1 appeared like the hull of some great battleship.
It seemed a Brontosaurus of the deep and the Doctor craned forward eagerly to watch it but his hands began to tremble with even greater excitement as he saw what followed in its wake. A school of strange roundheaded fishes with forefins which curved outward like clutching hands. They swam with malevolent carnivorous rapidity after the monster fish evidently in chase. There was something strangely horrifying in the sight of those sinister creatures never before looked upon by man, hunting their prey in a world of utter, forever unbroken silence, through the eternal night of the great deep.
It made the humans in the bathysphere realise more than anything else had done how completely cut off they were from that gay world of flowers and trees and sunshine thousands of feet above. They were staggered at their own temerity and momentarily appalled at the thought that they had dared to invade this vast kingdom of the unknown, far greater than all the land surfaces of the earth together, with no more promise of security than the single thin thread of t.f.a.—e 129 cable, stretching now to nearly a mile in length, from which they dangled.
Their thoughts were so occupied that they hardly noticed their descent of the last fifty fathoms. A sudden unexpected jar caused them to start from their seats in panic, but the Doctor's voice reassured them.
'We have made bottom—5,180 feet!'
They stared out through the fused quartz windows hoping to see something although they hardly knew what. Not temples and palaces of course but perhaps a great section of wall or part of a pyramid and they were vaguely disappointed when they saw that the strong beam of blue light revealed nothing except a barrel shaped fish and part of a mushroom like jelly with a trailing yellow skirt.
The bathysphere had landed on a gentle slope and so was tilted at an angle throwing the beam slightly up. The Doctor moved the lighting apparatus so that the long turquoise finger moved down towards the ground. Then they saw that they had landed on barren calcareous rock. There were no long waving fronds of seaweed, sea anemones, sponges or crustaceans to be seen. No trace at all of any undersea vegetation, for the multiform life of the beaches ceases entirely at a far lesser depth than that to which they had come being, like all vegetation dependent for existence on the light which filters down to it from the sun.
'The bottom is of volcanic rock as I expected,' muttered the Doctor. 'We will now proceed further. Oscar, tell them we ascend to five-thousand feet and then to move forward the ship one quarter mile.'
'Why go up so high?' asked Camilla. 'We couldn't possibly see the bottom from there. Can't they tow us along about six feet up?'
'A necessary precaution Gnddige Hertzogin. If we came suddenly to a submerged cliff face as the ship drags our sphere they would not have time to lift us over it owing to the length of the cable by which we hang. The sphere would crash against it and windows perhaps smash. This way our search will take much longer, but it is safer.'
They were already rising and, after what seemed a long wait, felt the sphere begin to move gently forward through the ever changing constellations of coloured lights. It veered round to a new angle through the pressure on its big fixed rudder which ensured it travelling with its windows to the front, so that they could see what was ahead, whenever it made any lateral movement. They knew from the direction in which it had turned that they were being drawn over the downward slope of the rocky platform below and when, a few moments later, they were lowered again they landed upon a completely different type of bottom at 5,230 feet.
A mist of tiny white particles rose like a cloud when the sphere came to rest as softly as though upon a bed of down and, as it cleared, the beam showed the reason. They were now in an undersea valley bottom into which the currents of the ocean floor had carried millions upon millions of shells, octopus beaks and teeth of long dead fish. They lay there white and even like a snowy carpet as far as the light beam carried the vision of the watchers in the sphere.
'So! Here you, see chalk deposits in formation,' remarked the Doctor and he swivelled the searchlight from side to side, but the shell carpet was unbroken by any huge monolith rounded by countless years of passing currents such as he had hoped to find.
Suddenly a big squid inside the beam gave a violent jerk with all its tentacles and flicked away. At the same moment every light outside the searchlight's path vanished and that frightening empty blackness supervened. The beam was broken by a large round knob and, as they realised what it was, they were utterly overcome by shock and amazement. A human face was staring in at them through the window,
The Empire of Perpetual Night
'Up!' shouted the Doctor, 'up!' and a second after Oscar had spoken the one word 'Emergency' into his mouthpiece the cable tightened jerking them away from the sea floor.
'Oh God! what was it,' cried Camilla.
'The Devil—the Devil himself!' exclaimed Vladimir making the sign of the Cross.
Sally put her hand before her eyes. 'That face!' she said. 'That face! I've never seen anything more awful!'
Count Axel sighed. 'Yes, I have only once looked upon a grimmer thing and that was the head of a man who had had his face burned to the bone when I was studying medicine many years ago, but, after all, whatever it was it could not have harmed us in this little steel fortress of ours so I think it a great pity that we did not remain down there to examine it more closely.'
The others shook their heads. They were in entire sympathy with Doctor Tisch who, scientist as he was, had been so repelled by that incredibly evil countenance that he had given way to the overwhelmingly powerful impulse to escape from its baleful gaze without a second's delay. Now, he told Oscar to report all well and ask for them to be brought up in the usual stages; otherwise there would have been no time for the people on deck to coil down the hose containing the electric wires as it came in, and, as they slashed the ties, it would have slid down in a tangled coil while the cable was wound on to the drums.
'I haf heard of such things,' the Doctor said huskily as he mopped the perspiration from his broad forehead with a big silk handkerchief. 'But I did not believe. It was one such as we saw before who hunted after the big fish.'
'Did you see its hands?' asked Sally with a shudder. 'Ugh, they were horrible.'
'And its teeth,' said Camilla shakily. 'That vicious receding jaw full of pointed fangs, I could almost feel them snapping into me. I wanted to scream but I was too terrified. What was it, a special sort of fish or an unknown type of human which has adapted itself to living under water?'
'It was a fish from the waist down and it had a thick scaly brownish tail,' Sally announced—'I saw it.'
'So did I,' agreed Axel, 'but it was a mammal, didn't you notice its breasts? They were round and full as though moulded from a perfectly proportioned cup, and the only beautiful thing about it. The head seemed to me like that of a monkey.'
'Yes, in a way. It had the same receding forehead but a monkey's teeth don't protrude like that, and this thing seemed to possess some horrible intelligence. Despite that flattened nose with the gaping nostrils it was more like the face of some unutterably depraved human.'
'Un
doubtedly it was a species which took to the water in the early stages of mammalian evolution,' remarked the Doctor who had now recovered from that unreasoning fear which had gripped them all, sufficiently to be thrilled by their discovery.
'If you had told me of this thing I would have said "Go and tell it to the mariners",' declared Vladimir. 'But by Crikey I was here and saw it with my own look.'
In the hour and three-quarters which it took them to ascend to the surface, lights came and went, a hundred varieties of sea creatures swam through the beam or later became visible by natural light in the upper levels, yet the party could think and talk of nothing but this ferocious race of fish men who lived and hunted a mile below the water-line unknown and undreamed of by modern science.
The McKay and Nicky were allowed aft again to meet their friends when the bathysphere had been hoisted on to its steel supports, and Sally, who was first out of the sphere ran up the ladder towards them. Her eyes were bright with excitement and her cheeks flaming.
'We've seen a mermaid!' she panted breathlessly.
Nicky smiled, a tolerant but disbelieving smile. The McKays blue eyes twinkled.
'Garn!' he said with frank derision.
'But we have I tell you—honestly,' Sally insisted.
'And she had long golden hair done up in plaits tied with blue ribbon, eh?' he smiled sarcastically.
Sally shook her head. 'No, it was beastly—the most revolting thing I've ever seen. It had a round head like a cannon ball and a short thick neck; hardly any shoulders, but two short arms which from the elbows down seemed to be only skin and bone. It had proper hands with long clutching skinny fingers and sharp nails like claws. The fingers were webbed I think, but I'm not certain about that. I only saw it for a second. Then it had little round upstanding breasts just like a well-developed girl of sixteen. From the stomach down, though, it was a fish and all thick scaly tail.'
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