They Found Atlantis

by Dennis Wheatley

  “Well,” she hesitated. “If it’s to be with you alone I think I’d like to know first what it is.”

  Count Axel’s blue eyes twinkled under their half lowered lids. “It is a game for three,” he reassured her. “You, I, and one other.”

  “All right then—fire away.”

  “We will get the good Doctor to stop this ship and take us down for a trial trip in his bathysphere.”

  Camilla paled a little. “But—but do you think that would be quite safe?”

  “Certainly. We shall send it down empty first to see that its windows and door resist the pressure of the water. If all is well there should be no danger after.”

  “I think I’d be scared of doing that.”

  “A little perhaps—but not too much,” he encouraged her. “After all you do not mean to miss the wonderful thrill of seeing the sunken city if we find it surely—so you must make your first dive some time. Why not now?”

  “But would there be anything worth seeing here in the open sea?”

  The Count raised his mental eyes to heaven at the stupidity of the question but his placid smile remained unchanged. “Why yes. All sorts of fish, octopus perhaps, and all the teeming life of the great ocean. No aquarium that you have ever visited could compare with such a sight. If you will come I promise that you shall not have one dull moment and will thank me ever after for being the first to introduce you to such marvels.”

  It was an invitation which many men might have hesitated to accept, but Camilla was no coward and although her voice was a little breathless she nodded. “All right let’s.”

  Doctor Tisch was furious when he was informed of her decision. His only thought now was to reach the Azores as quickly as possible in order that Slinger and his confederates could get through with whatever dubious business they meditated against Camilla and her party—and leave him free to proceed with his scientific investigation.

  He protested in vain that the bathysphere had already been tested in European waters, that the dive was pointless, and that oxygen would be wasted to no purpose. Count Axel met his every objection and, since there was not the faintest indication of bad weather approaching, the Doctor was compelled to give in.

  By eleven o’clock the whole party and a good portion of the crew had assembled aft. The ship was hove to facing the gentle swell. The tackles attached to the winches hauled the bathysphere to the extremity of its runners, the great crane rumbled into motion and took up the slack of the cable. Then, with no perceptible drop, the big sphere, already one third submerged, slid from its steel guides into the water.

  At a signal from Captain Ardow the cable was paid out, the empty bathysphere sank from sight to a depth of fifty feet, then the great arm of the crane swung round until, further forward, the cable was brought almost to the ship’s side.

  As the bathysphere descended a group of men under the second officer had been paying out the thick rubber hose containing the triple telephone and lighting wires which entered the top of the sphere through a stuffing box. Now, this was attached to the cable by a rope tie in order that it should not break under the strain of its own weight. Captain Ardow gave another order and the bathysphere was let down a further 200 feet.

  Another tie was fixed attaching the communication hose again to the cable. Both were paid out once more and so the business proceeded, with a halt at every 200 feet for fresh ties to be attached, until the empty bathysphere hung 2,000 feet beneath the ship.

  The Doctor then gave orders for it to be hauled up again, and the reverse process was followed. As the cable wound in on the drums the communication hose was coiled down by hand, the machinery stopping every two minutes to enable the second officer to remove the ties which attached the hose to the cable.

  At last, eighty-three minutes after the bathysphere had sunk from view, it reappeared again and now the ticklish task of getting it back on its runners was undertaken. A boat having been lowered guy ropes were attached to ringbolts in the sphere’s surface, the winches were brought into play and the guy ropes tightened until the great steel ball had been brought into correct alignment. The crane clanked, the bathysphere lifted a fraction, and slid gently back into its original position.

  The whole operation had occupied an hour and fifty minutes so it was now nearly one o’clock but Camilla feared that if she put off her dive until after lunch she would lose her courage and told the Doctor that, if all was well, she was quite prepared to go down.

  A ladder was lowered to the special platform which supported by the steel runners of the bathysphere, filled the gap between it and the ship. The Doctor and four of the crew descended to it.

  For ten minutes they worked with great wrenches on the bolts that sealed the circular door in the side of the sphere. At last they got it off and Doctor Tisch, having made a careful examination of the interior, reported that everything was perfectly satisfactory.

  Sally kissed Camilla impulsively and cried: “Oh do be careful darling! Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to come with you.”

  Camilla bit her lower lip nervously, but shook her head. “No, dear,” she said. “I promised to make the first trip alone with the Doctor and Count Axel—so here goes.”

  The Count handed her down on to the platform and helped her in the awkward business of scrambling through the small round opening in the sphere, then he turned, waved to the others and followed her inside.

  At first there seemed hardly room to turn round in the strange spherical chamber in which they found themselves and except in its centre, it was impossible to stand upright. The concave walls positively bristled with instruments, cylinders, gauges, wires, and the searchlight apparatus occupied a good portion of the headroom to their right. However, it was actually constructed to hold eight people and climbing over the backs of the canvas chairs which were screwed to the wooden floor they settled themselves opposite the row of fused quartz portholes.

  The Doctor climbed in after them and then his telephonist, Oscar, a pale pimply young man whom they had not seen before. A derrick lifted the circular solid steel door from the platform and swung it into place, the crew pushed it home over the ring of bolts that held it in position, and then began to screw it down.

  Oscar squatted on a stool near the door and put his instruments over his head, while the Doctor wriggled into another of the canvas chairs from which he could control the searchlight. Suddenly there was a thunderous, ear-splitting crash.

  Camilla and Axel both ducked but the Doctor shouted to them. “Do not be alarmed! It is only the crew who hammer home the bolts,” and stuffed his fingers in his ears.

  They followed his example but it was impossible to shut out the din and for the next five minutes the sphere reverberated as though giant projectiles were constantly being hurled against it. Then the noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun and gave place to an utter eerie silence.

  “I’m frightened,” said Camilla breathlessly.

  Count Axel took her hand and pressed it. “No you’re not,” he told her confidently. “You are just missing the sound of the waves—that’s all.”

  “All right, I’m not then,” she smiled faintly but clung tightly to his arm.

  The telephonist was speaking to his opposite number on the deck. The Doctor opened up his trays of Calcium chloride for absorbing excessive moisture, and Soda lime for removing the poisonous Carbon dioxide from the used air. Then he turned on the precious life giving oxygen, and the circulator fan. The telephonist spoke again, and the bathysphere began to move.

  Up on the deck the McKay leaned over the rail with Sally beside him. “By Jove,” he murmured, “I’ve often thought Camilla wanted her bottom smacking, but I’ll give it to her that she’s a darn brave kid. I wouldn’t go down in that thing for a thousand pounds.”

  As he spoke the waters closed over the bathysphere and it began its journey to those grim regions where strange life dwells in perpetual night.

  CHAPTER VII

  DIVE NUMBER ONE


  Camilla stared nervously out of one of the portholes. As the bathysphere sank below the waterline bubbles of air obscured her view and she could see nothing for a moment, then the chamber dimmed to a gentle green and she found herself facing a barnacle encrusted surface which had long streamers of greeny-yellow weed waving gracefully from it—the hull of the ship.

  They seemed so near that she started back, fearing that they were going to crash against it, but Count Axel gave her hand another reassuring squeeze. He knew that, fused quartz being the clearest and most transparent material in the world, distances are apt to be deceptive when judged through it, and that the streamers of golden weed which appeared near enough to touch by stretching out a hand were actually fifteen to twenty feet away at the least. Another moment and the hull had slipped from view, their last visible link with the upper world was gone.

  Almost at once the water took on a bluish tinge but the interior of the bathysphere remained light and bright. A thousand little motes drifted past the windows as they sank—the insects of the sea. Then a shoal of aurelia jellyfish drifted by pulsing gracefully along as they passed their level and, as they were halted for the first tie—attaching the communication hose to the cable—to be fixed, they saw their first fish.

  “Oh look,” exclaimed Camilla, “aren’t they lovely!” It was only small fry but the irredescent light upon their scales made them seem like living jewels.

  The telephonist muttered, the sphere descended again. All trace of red and orange in the light had disappeared, the yellow tinge was now scarcely perceptible and instead they had been replaced with a more brilliant blue. A dozen prawns came swimming by graceful, silver, fairy like, and then three fishes in a row. The bathysphere stopped and the Doctor murmured: “We are now at 400 feet. Deeper than any submarine now made can go.”

  A long string of siphonophores making a pattern like the most delicate lace slipped past. Then came another fish, a small fat absurd looking puffer, who peered with round expressionless eyes at them through the window, but he flashed away with a swift thrust of his tail as a ghostly pilot fish, pure white with black upright bands, came into view.

  As the sphere moved on its downward journey two big silvery bronze eels came swimming by and now Camilla sat entranced. All sense of fear had left her under the fascination of this marvellous ever changing spectacle. The sight of all this teeming life beneath the ocean with its myriad colours and thousand different forms held her spellbound as she gazed.

  Now the last trace of green had faded from the spectrum and the brilliant blue was tinged with violet. Yet the light had not perceptibly darkened, only its reds, yellows, and greens had disappeared leaving a strange unearthly brightness which had a queer effect upon them. It held excitement and exhilaration something similar to the effect of mountain air or a draught of iced champagne. There was a tenseness in the atmosphere and their senses seemed tuned up to a greater, almost unnatural, degree of vivid receptivity.

  A lantern fish, their first sight of a real inhabitant of the deeper seas came sailing by, his scales ablaze with his full armour of irredescence. A squid, goggle eyed, pouch bodied, his tentacles waving in a deep sea dance pulsed on his way, then some pinkish fish, semi-transparent so that their vertebrae and food filled stomachs were clearly visible, and next a great scarlet snapper.

  “Now 600 feet,” announced the Doctor as the sphere stopped in its descent again. “No man has been so deep except in a bathysphere.”

  The light had darkened to a deep violet blue and still had that eerie unearthly quality about it. In the distance now they could see some pale flashes as fish from the deeps, carrying their own lights, moved to and fro. The Doctor switched on his searchlight but although it seemed dark outside the yellow glare had, as yet, little effect, so he turned it off.

  Again the steel chamber in which they crouched together slipped gently downward. Two irredescent eyes suddenly appeared at the porthole, then as they moved a long pale ribbon like transparent gelatine undulated by, the larva of some great sea eel. Black jellyfish, a shoal of shrimps, a pale blue fish and then a great dark form moving slowly in the blue black distance. More sea snails looking like dull gold shields, another squid, larger this time, and next a lovely silver hatchet fish glowing faintly in the deep blue murk.

  At 800 feet it seemed that the limit to light penetrating from that far upper world of sun and wind and sky, had come. Only a grey blue blackness now filled the steel chamber yet the remaining suggestion of light still had that strange brilliant quality about it and when they tried the searchlight it made little impression on the darkened waters. As the Doctor switched it off everything went dead black for a moment then the intensely silent blue black twilight wrapped them in its folds again.

  As they sank still lower, twinkling lights moved all the time in the distance palish green, lemon, pink, yellow, and blue. A big jellyfish slopped against one of the portholes its stomach filled with luminous food, a great deep sea eel came slithering past and then a cloud of petropods momentarily shut out everything else from view.

  “1,000 feet,” announced the Doctor. “We shall see now with our light,” and as he switched it on they saw that it had at last become effective. The bright yellow beam cut a sharply defined path through the inky blueness of the waters. Then they were able to witness a most curious phenomenon. Outside the beam lights of all colours were visible like the fairy lamps in some enchanted garden; as a row of them moved forward they suddenly went out and the head and body of a strange looking fish appeared like a brilliant colourful painting in the yellow ray. Sometimes a fish would remain half in half out, its head and fore-part clear and beautiful but cut off as though with a sharp knife in the middle, the rest of its body and tail only indicated by a row of tiny lights like the portholes of a ship.

  At 1,200 feet a great cloud-like mass came into view again but the extreme range of the searchlight only just showed it so their intense curiosity regarding this mighty inhabitant of the lower seas had to remain unsatisfied.

  At 1,400 feet, there was an inexplicable empty patch. For some unknown reason not a single organism of any kind was visible, but at 1,600 they passed into teeming life again. Squids, jellies, deep sea prawns, rat-tailed macrourids and golden-tailed serpent dragons all carrying their own illuminations drifted or swam by. Even Count Axel, who had expected wonders, was staggered by the thought of all this brilliant multi-coloured life spreading over the thousands of miles of sea that cover two thirds of the earth’s entire surface.

  When they reached 1,800 feet the Doctor switched off the light again. After the first almost physical blow of darkness had fallen an intense unutterable loneliness seemed to chill their hearts. The ship above seemed as far away as England. It was in another world, distinct, apart; their present life did not even seem to be a continuation of that which they had known; years back as they felt it at that moment, where moon and stars alternate with the daily rising and setting of the sun.

  Gradually, into that vital bluish darkness a faint, faint greyness seemed to penetrate, and they knew that even here the last tenuous suggestion of the brilliant sunshine above could just reach them.

  Spellbound they gazed from the ports. The blackness tinged only by palest grey was lit by an absolute display of fireworks. Green, red, yellow, blue, in rows of dots, singly, in pairs, in long tenuous streamers, they flickered and moved, some going on and off as though under the control of their strange owners. Something seemed to burst in the near distance giving off a million tiny sparks. The Doctor switched on the light; there was nothing to be seen but a shoal of incredibly thin fairy like fish and a big octopus half in and half out of the beam.

  As they moved downward again more lantern fish appeared, and a shoal of hatchet fish, then a great blunt nosed monster at least three feet in length who carried a large green light waving above his head upon a single fin.

  “We register now 2,000 feet,” announced the Doctor. “The sun’s light never penetrates to this depth. H
ere is the region of perpetual night.” Again he switched off the searchlight. The pyrotechnic display outside continued but not the faintest glimmer of greyness now came to light the stygian blackness of this uncharted world.

  “We ascend now,” said the Doctor, and Oscar, who had been keeping up an intermittent mutter, mumbled again into his mouth piece.

  “No, no!” cried Camilla, “let’s go further down—please.” It was the first time she had spoken for nearly three quarters of an hour.

  “Not so!” The Doctor shook his head. “It is enough. The sphere has only been tested for this depth to-day. We must not go deeper,” and as he spoke they felt the pull of the cable carrying them up to daylight once more.

  For the forty minutes of the upward journey they witnessed fresh scenes in the ever changing life which flourishes beneath the seas, from the self-lighted creatures who roam the depths, to a ten foot shark at 400 feet, and the floating jellies of the shallow waters. From out of the pitch black depths they rose by stages through the faint grey lighting of the bluish murk into the deep black-blue, then experienced again, for a thousand feet, the weird exhilaration of that staggeringly brilliant blue light growing brighter and brighter as they came near to the surface and, at last, passed into the area where green still penetrates then yellow and finally, just beneath the surface, orange and red.

  As the crew began their preparations for hoisting the bathysphere back on to its steel supports Count Axel smiled at Camilla.

  “You enjoyed it?”

  “Oh immensely.” She squeezed his arm, “I never dreamed that such things could be. Thank you a thousand times for persuading me to come.”

  He leaned towards her: “There are many other wonderful things in the world which I could show you if you wished.”

  “Are there?” she raised one eyebrow with a little smile.

  “Yes. You have hardly travelled at all yet and travel needs more than just money and a guide book to be undertaken successfully. It is an art.”