Silently Hakin and Abbot sprang upon the guard and throttled him; then released Milli. There was no time for more than a few hurried words of explanation before the three of them left the prison and made for the locks of the subterranean canal, picking up Romehl at a preappointed spot on the way.
* * * *
The canal locks were unguarded, as well as the storerooms of the submarines. Each of the rooms held two subs, and could open onto the second lock and be separately flooded.
The submarines were of steel as thick as Abbot’s bathysphere. Their shape was that of an elongated rain drop, with fins. In the pointed tip of their tails were motors which could operate at any pressure. At the front end were quartz windows. In the top fin was an expanding device which could be filled with buoyant gas, produced by chemicals, when the craft neared the surface. Each submarine also contained a radio set, so tuned as to be capable of opening and closing the radio-controlled gates of the locks. Each would carry comfortably two or three persons.
Having picked out two submarines and found them to be in order, Hakin sneaked back into the corridor to set off the time-fuse, leaving his three companions in the dark in the storeroom. Abbot put a protecting arm around Milli, while Romehl snuggled close to her other side.
Their hearts were all racing madly with excitement, and this was intensified when they heard Hakin talking with someone just outside their door.
Then Hakin returned unexpectedly.
“Something terrible has happened!” he breathed. “The explosives have been discovered and are gone. One of the expedition men has just informed me. Someone must have gotten word to Thig—”
“Why, I did,” interrupted Milli. “I told my guard, just before they came and changed him.”
Abbot groaned.
Hakin continued hurriedly: “So Dolf plans to leave at once. He is already rounding up his followers. Come on! We must get out ahead of him!”
An uproar could be heard drawing near in the corridor outside. Abbot opened the door and peered out; then shut it again and whispered, “The two factions are fighting already.”
“Then come on!” exclaimed Hakin.
As he spoke he turned on the lights, wedged the door tight against its gaskets and threw the switch which started the water seeping into the storeroom; then he led Romehl hurriedly to one of the two submarines, while George and Milli rushed to the other. Heavy blows sounded against the storeroom door.
The water rapidly rose about them, and the four friends crawled inside the two machines and clamped the lids tight. Then they waited for sufficient depth, so that they could get under way.
The water rose above their bow windows, but suddenly and inexplicably it began to subside again. A man waded by around the bow of Abbot’s machine.
“They’ve crashed in the door, and are pumping out the water again!” exclaimed Abbot. “We’re trapped!”
“Not yet!” grimly replied the girl at his side. “Can you work the radio door controls?”
“Yes.”
“Then quick! Open the doors into the lock!”
He pressed a button. Ahead of them two gates swung inward, followed by a deluge of water.
“Come on!” spoke the girl. “Full speed ahead, before the water gets too low.”
Abbot did so. Out into the lock they sped, in the face of the surging current. Then Abbot pushed another button to close the gates behind them. But the water continued to fall, and they grounded before they reached the end of the lock. Quite evidently the rush of the current had kept the doors from closing behind them. The city was being flooded through the broken door of the storeroom.
But Abbot opened the next gate, and again they breasted the incoming torrent. This time, although the level continued to fall, their craft did not quite ground.
“They must have got the gates shut behind us at last,” said he, as he opened the next set and pressed on.
* * * *
And then he had an idea. Why not omit to close any further gates behind him? As a result, the sea pressure would eventually break down the inmost barriers, and destroy the city as effectively as Dolf’s bomb would have done. But he said nothing to Milli of this plan: she might wish to save her people.
Gate after gate they passed. This was too simple. A few more locks and they would be out in open water. The submarine of Hakin and Romehl swept by—evidently to let George and Milli know their presence—and then dropped behind again. But was it their two friends after all? It might have been some enemy! They could not be sure.
This uncertainty cast a chill of apprehension over them, which was immediately heightened by the sudden extinguishing of the overhead lights of the tunnel. Abbot pressed the radio button for the next set of locks, but they did not budge.
“What can be the matter?” he asked frantically.
“My people must have turned off the electric current,” Milli replied. “The gates won’t open without electricity to feed the motors. We’re trapped again.”
For a moment they lay stunned by a realization that their escape was blocked.
“Kiss me good-by, dear,” breathed Milli. “This is the end.”
As the young man reached over to take her in his arms, the submarine was suddenly lifted up and spun backward, end over end: then tumbled and bumped along, as though it were a chip on an angry mountain torrent.
Stunned and bruised and bleeding, the young American finally lost consciousness.…
* * * *
Then he came to his senses again, his first words were, “Milli, where are you?”
“My darling!” breathed a voice at his side. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Where are we? What has happened?”
“The entire system of locks must have crashed in and flooded the city,” said she.
Instantly Abbott’s mind grasped the explanation of this occurrence: their leaving open so many gates behind them had made it impossible for the few remaining gates ahead to withstand the terrific pressures of the ocean depths, and they had crumpled. But he did not tell Milli his part in this.
She continued, “I was pretty badly shaken up myself, but I’ve got this boat going again, and we’re on our way out of the tunnel. See—I’ve found out how to work our searchlight.”
He looked. A broad beam of light from their bow, illuminated the tunnel ahead of them.
Presently another beam appeared, shooting by them from behind.
“Hakin and Romehl!” exclaimed the girl. “Then they’re safe, too!”
The tunnel walls grew rough, then disappeared. They were out in the open sea at last, although still one mile beneath the surface.
But in front of them was an angry seething school of the man-sharks, clearly illumined by the two rays of light. Behind the sharks were a score or more of serpentine steeds.
The sharks saw the two submarines and charged down upon them; but Milli, with great presence of mind, shut off her searchlight and swung sharply to the left.
“Up! Up!” urged the young man, so she turned the craft upward.
* * * *
On and on they went, with no interference. Presently they turned the light on again, so as to see what progress they were making. But they were making absolutely none! They were merely standing on their tail. They had reached a height of such relatively low pressure that it took all the churning of their propeller just merely to counteract the great weight of their submarine.
Abbot switched on their chemical gas supply, and as their top fin expanded into a balloon they again began to rise.
One thing, however, perplexed the young man: the water about him seemed jet black rather than blue. They must by now be close to the surface of the sea, where at least a twilight blue should be visible. Even at the one mile depth in his bathysphere, the water had been brilliant, yet here, almost at the surface, he could see absolutely nothing.
He switched on the searchlight again to make sure that their window wasn’t clouded over; but it wasn’t.
>
Then suddenly a rippling veil of pale silver appeared ahead; then a blue-black sky and twinkling stars. They had reached the surface, and it was night.
He pointed out the stars to the girl at his side, then swung the nose of the submarine around and showed her the moon.
Where next? George Abbot picked out his position by the stars and headed east. East across the Pacific, toward America.
But soon he noticed that their little craft was dropping beneath the surface. He kept heading up more and more; he threw the lever for more and more chemical gas; yet still they continued to sink.
“Milli!” he exclaimed, “we’ve got to get out of here!”
She clutched him in fear, for to her the pressure of the open sea meant death, certain death. But he pushed her firmly away, and unclamped the lid of the submarine. In another instant he had hauled her out and was battling his way to the surface, while their little boat sunk slowly beneath them.
Milli was an experienced swimmer, for the undersea folk enjoyed the privilege of a large indoor pool. As soon as she found that the open sea did not kill her, she became calm.
Side by side they floated in the moonlight. The sky began to pink in the east. Dawn came, the first dawn that Milli had ever seen.
Suddenly she called George’s attention to two bobbing heads some distance away in the path of light the rising sun made on the ocean.
“Hakin and Romehl!” he exclaimed. Long since they had given them up for dead; but evidently fate had treated them in much the same way as themselves.
And a moment later his own salt-stung eyes noticed a long gray shape to one side.
As the day brightened, Abbot suddenly noticed a large bulking shape nearby.
It was his own boat!—the one which had lowered him into the depths in his bathysphere so many weeks and weeks ago! Evidently it was still sticking around, grappling for his long dead body.
“Come on, dear,” said he, and side by side they swam over to it.
He helped her up the ship’s ladder. The ship’s cook sleepily stuck his head out of the galley door.
“Hullo, Mike,” sang out George Abbot merrily to the astonished man. “I’ve brought company for breakfast. And there’ll be two more when we can lower a boat.”
THE EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURE OF A CHIEF MATE, by W. Clark Russell
In the Newspapers of 1876 appeared the following extracts from the log of a merchantman:
“VOLCANIC ISLAND IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC.—The ship Hercules, of Liverpool, lately arrived in the Mersey, reports as follows: March 23, in 2° 12' north latitude, 33° 27' west longitude, a shock of earthquake was felt and shortly afterward a mass of land was hove up at a distance of about two miles from the ship. Michael Balfour, the chief officer, fell overboard. The buoy was thrown to him, the ship brought to the wind, and a boat lowered within fifteen minutes of the occurrence. But though the men sought the chief mate for some time, nothing could be seen of him, and it is supposed that he sank shortly after falling into the sea. Masters of vessels are recommended to keep a sharp lookout in approaching the situation of the new island as given above. No doubt it will be sighted by other ships, and duly reported.”
I am Michael Balfour; I it was who fell overboard; and it is needless for me to say here that I was not drowned. The volcanic island was only reported by one other ship, and the reason why will be read at large in this account of my strange adventure and merciful deliverance.
It was the evening of the 23d of March, 1876. Our passage to the equator from Sydney had been good, but for three days we had been bothered with light head winds and calms, and since four o’clock this day the ocean had stretched in oil-smooth undulations to its margin, with never a sigh of air to crispen its marvelous serenity into shadow. The courses were hauled up, the staysails down, the mizzen brailed up; the canvas delicately beat the masts to the soft swing of the tall spars, and sent a small rippling thunder through the still air, like a roll of drums heard at a distance. The heat was great; I had never remembered a more biting sun. The pitch in the seams was soft as putty, the atmosphere was full of the smell of blistered paint, and it was like putting your hand on a red-hot stove to touch the binnacle hood or grasp for an instant an iron belaying-pin.
A sort of loathing comes into a man with a calm like this. “The very deep did rot,” says the poet; and you understood the fancy when you marked the blind heave of the swell to the sun standing in the midst of a sky of brass, with his wake under him sinking in a sinuous dazzle, as though it was his fiery glance piercing to the green depths a thousand fathoms deep. It was hot enough to slacken the nerves and give the imagination a longer scope than sanity would have it ride by. That was why, perhaps, I found something awful and forbidding in the sunset, though at another time it might scarcely have detained my gaze a minute. But it is true, nevertheless, that others besides me gaped at the wonderful gushings of hot purple—arrested whirlpools of crimson haze, they looked—in the heart of which the orb sat rayless, flooding the sea with blood under him, so magnificently fell was the hue, and flushing the sky with twenty dies of gold and orange, till, in the far east, the radiance fainted into the delicacy of pale amber.
“Yon’s a sunset,” said Captain Matthews, a North of England man, to me, “to make a fellow think of the last day.”
“I’m looking at it, sir,” said I, “as though I had never seen a sunset before. That’s the oddest part of it, to my mind. There’s fire enough there to eat a gale up. How should a cat’s-paw crawl then?” And I softly whistled, while he wetted his finger and held it up; but to no purpose; the draught was all between the rails, and they blew forward and aft with every swing of the sails.
When the dusk came along, the silence upon the sea was something to put all sorts of moods into a man. The sky was a hovering velvet stretch of stars, with a young moon lying curled among them, and winkings of delicate violet sheet-lightning down in the southwest, as though some gigantic-tinted lantern, passing, flung its light upon the dark blue obscure there. The captain went below, after a long, impatient look round, and I overhung the rail, peering into the water alongside, or sending my gaze into the frightful distance, where the low-lying stars hung. With every soft dip of the ship’s side to the slant of the dark folds, there shot forth puffs of cloudy phosphor, intermixed with a sparkling of sharper fires now and again, blue, yellow, and green, like worms of flame striking out of their cocoons of misty radiance. The noise of the canvas on high resembled the stirring of pinions, and the cheep of a block, the grind of a parrel, helped the illusion, as though the sounds were the voices of huge birds restlessly beating their pinions aloft.
Presently the man at the wheel startled me with an observation. I went to him, and he pointed upward with a long, shadowy arm. I looked, and saw a corposant, as it is called at sea—a St. Elmo’s fire—burning at the end of the crossjack-yard. The yard lay square, and the polished sea beneath gave back the reflection so clearly that the mystic fire lay like a huge glow-worm on the black mirror.
“There should be wind not far off,” said the helmsman, in a subdued voice; for few sailors can see one of these lights without a stirring of their superstitious instincts, and this particular exhalation hung close to us.
“I hope so,” said I,”though I don’t know where it’s to come from.”
As I spoke, the light vanished. I ran my eye over the yards, expecting its reappearance; but it returned no more, and the sails rose pale and phantom-like to the stars. I was in an odd humour, and this was an apparition not to brighten one up. Of course one knows all about these marine corpse-candles, and can explain their nature; but nevertheless the sudden kindling of them upon the darkness of the night, in the dead hush of the calm or amid the fury of the shrieking hurricane, produces feelings which there is nothing in science to resolve. I could have laughed to find myself sending a half-awed look aloft, as if I expected to see some visionary hand at work upon another one of these graveyard illuminations—with a stealing out of some
large, sad face to the melancholy glow; but I returned to the side very pensive for all that, and there stood watching the fiery outline of a shark subtly sneaking close to the surface (insomuch that the wake of its fin slipped away in little coils of green flame) toward the ship’s bows.
Half an hour later the dark curl of a light air of wind shattered the starlight in the sea, and our canvas fell asleep. I called to the watch to trim sail, and in a few moments the decks were busy with the figures of men pulling and hauling and surging out at the ropes in sulky, slumberous growlings. The captain arrived.
“Little worth having in this, I fear,” said he. But make the most of it. Get the foretopmast stunsail run up. if she creeps but a league, it is a league to the good.”
The sail was sleepily set. Humbugging about with stunsails to the cat’s-paws little pleased the men, especially at night. For three days they had been boxhauling the yards about to no purpose, and it was sickening work running stunsail-booms out to airs that died in their struggles to reach us. However, here was a draught at last, and the old gurgling and moaning sounds of the breathless, sluggish swell washing heavily like liquid lead to the sides were replaced by the tinkling noises of waters parting at the bows with a pretty little seething of expiring foam, and the hiss of exploding froth-bells. At eleven o’clock the light breeze was still holding, and the ship was floating softly through the dusk, the paring of moon swaying like a silver sickle over the port mizzen topsail yard-arm, everything quiet along the decks, no light save the sheen from the lamps in the binnacle, and nothing stirring but the figure of a man in the forecastle pacing athwartships, and blotting at every step a handful of stars which lay like dust on the blackness, under the yawn of the forecourse. On a sudden a steamer’s lights showed on the starboard bow—a green beam, and a yellow one above, with the water on fire beneath them, and sparks floating away upon her coil of smoke, that made you think of the spangles of a falling rocket. She went past swiftly, at no great distance from us. There was not a moan in the hot breeze to disturb the wonderful ocean stillness, and you almost thought you caught the beating of the iron heart in her, and the curious monotonous songs which engines sing as they work. She swept past like a phantom, running a line of illuminated windows along which resembled a row of streetlamps out in the darkness; and as she came on to our quarter she struck seven bells (half-past eleven), the rich metallic notes of which I clearly heard; and with the trembling of the last stroke upon the ear her outline melted.
The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works Page 7
