Suddenly they knew that they had ceased moving yet their downward motion had been checked so gently that it was almost as though they were attached to the cable and only halting for one of the hose ties to be put on. There was a pause of about two minutes then, whatever held them pressed in the mass of fish, began to haul them in a fresh direction.
They started to bump a little and the Doctor cast anxious eyes on the tanks where the spotlight of the torch showed them tilted at an angle. The sphere rolled over again, but not very much this time, only sufficient to make it necessary for them to change the place where they were crouching to a few feet nearer the door. The jolting ceased and they were sinking once more—still further into the abyss.
“What the thunderin’ blazes is happening,” growled the McKay. It was the first coherent remark which emerged from the almost perpetual cries of fear and astonishment following their upset.
“We have been swallowed with these many fish,” said Vladimir. “We are now as that poor Joshua in the belly of a whale.”
“I do not think so,” the Doctor shook his head. “We know little yet about life in the great deeps but it is quite unreasonable to suppose the existence of any such gigantic species. A swallow large enough to pass the bathysphere as part of a single gulp would need a submarine monster as great as a two-thousand ton ship—I do not believe it possible.”
“Besides,” Count Axel added, “we were dragged along the sea floor, sank several hundred feet, were dragged again, and are now sinking once more. Our movements would be quite different if we were in the stomach of some undreamed of Leviathan.”
As he ceased speaking they came to rest as gently as before. There was another pause then, for the third time the sphere was dragged sideways. They had to move again. The door was now almost at the bottom of the sphere, the ports were tilted upward at an angle in the slope of what was now the ceiling. For ten minutes the sphere moved forward, jerkily at times, while they lay or crouched among the broken canvas chairs and débris in its bottom.
It halted again and remained quite still. Then the blotches of light at the portholes began to move more freely. The Doctor lifted the beam of his torch from the cylinders to the ports and they saw that the pressure upon the great shoal of living creatures outside had been released. They were no longer jammed tight, but a seething mass leaping and thrashing in the water. After a moment bubbles appeared then foam and a little wavelet splashed against the fuzed quartz. The fish slid downwards and disappeared. A water line now showed in the top sections of the ports then sank jerkily until that too was gone.
The Doctor stumbled to his feet and held his big torch close to one of the windows, the others craned their necks, standing on the broken chairs, to peer out over his shoulders.
Outside it was pitch dark and the beam did not carry to any roof above them, but in front and a little higher than the level of the sphere they could just make out a wall that had a flat even surface and seemed like the side of a stone quay. All about them were a solid mass of squirming fish and squids of every colour and variety which stretched right up to the wall and on either side of them as far as they could see. The bathysphere was half buried in them right up to the lower edges of its ports which were now almost at the top of the sphere.
“Where in heaven’s name are we?” gasped Nicky.
“I don’t know and I don’t care!” exclaimed the McKay with sudden excitement, “but there’s air outside—air. Come on! We’ve got to get out of here.”
Count Axel sighed, then he said slowly, “I’m afraid you’ve forgotten my friend that we are bolted in. Our two ton door is screwed down from outside. Escape is quite impossible and our oxygen will only last us just over another hour.”
CHAPTER XVI
TRAPPED IN THE SPHERE
Count axel’s sober statement brought them crashing down from wild heights of excitement to a new level of despair. It was true. They were still sealed in the sphere and any attempt to break out of it must prove as hopeless as if they had been locked into the strongest vault under the Bank of England.
For a moment they were frozen into silence then Nicky cried: “Look—look! There’s something moving on that wall out there!”
As they stared a bulky greyish mass appeared out of the darkness and they saw they were right in supposing the wall to form a quay, for the mass came forward and it was recognisable as a solid block of countless human figures.
“Saved by Crikey!” exclaimed Vladimir. “Camilla! We are saved I say!”
She had come out of her faint again and, picking her up bodily, he held her so that she could see out of the port. A fresh wave of tremulous hope surged through the others. If these were human beings they would surely find some way to unscrew the door bolts of the sphere and let its occupants out.
But how could they be? In breathless silence Camilla and her friends pressed their faces to the windows and watched the advancing mob. They appeared human, yet they moved in darkness. No trace of light except the beam of the Doctor’s torch and the luminosity of the creatures packed tight about the sphere, showed in this great undersea cavern; and the newcomers carried neither flares nor torches. Moreover, they wore no clothes or ornaments; everyone of them was stark naked and their bodies were an unhealthy greyish white.
“They’re not human,” whispered Sally. “And they are horrible—horrible.”
The McKay felt too that there was something utterly repulsive about that crowd of nude leperous looking bodies huddled on the quay, but he was not so ready to exclude them from the human race. They were a small people, the tallest among the males being only about five feet in height, but they certainly were not monkeys and each of them held a long spearlike weapon in his hand. Their bodies were hairless except for the pale, lank, almost white hair which grew sparsely on their narrow skulls. Their faces were curiously uniform with large parroty, wide nostrilled noses, heavy lidded, almost colourless eyes, large mouths filled with white even gleaming teeth, and weak underhung jaws, yet they had nothing of that savage vicious look which had characterised the faces of the Mermen.
No leader appeared to control or direct their movements. They pressed forward, then sideways, all together, like a herd which scents danger or fresh pasture, in a wind. One of them slipped and fell from the quayside into the mass of fish. A great squid reached out a tentacle and curled it, snake-like, round his neck.
The others made no attempt to help him but stood there gibbering and twitching their heads from side to side, as though they knew what had happened without glancing down, but were only concerned with acute anxiety for themselves.
The one who had fallen fought and struggled, striving to break the grasp of the tentacle with one stubby claw-like hand and stabbing frantically with his long sharp spear, but the squid reached up three more tentacles and, wrapping them round his arms and torso, dragged him down.
It was all over in a moment, almost before Nicky had time to gasp: “Why don’t they help him?” and Sally moaned.
Upon the quayside the great mob had steadied. The front rank threw themselves upon their knees, the others pressed up behind them leaning across their shoulders then, as though upon a common impulse rather than at any word of command, they all began to stab downward with their spears, striking again and again at the heaving fish below. The torrent of blows was so fast and regular that nothing could live under it; the long spears reached right down to the bottom of the harbour and soon even the tentacles of the squids had ceased to wave, for every creature within six feet of the quay was dead—stabbed through and through a dozen times.
Suddenly, like a herd once more, the whole mob leapt from the quay wall into the slippery sea of carcasses and attacked the still living creatures further out with the same rhythmic stabbing. A spear struck the bathysphere, another and another. The party inside it could not hear the clang of the blows upon the metal but they realised then, that this strange race of half men was blind.
As the mob advanced, wading waist
high in the slimy shoal of dead sea creatures, a small fat woman with enormous hanging breasts stumbled head first against the bathysphere. She opened her mouth in what appeared to be a scream and, almost instantly the mouths of all the others opened too then, as one man, they turned and fled. Floundering, slipping, thrusting each other aside they fought their way back to the quayside, and scrambled on to it. There they turned again and crouched in a great huddle, their spears upraised, staring blindly out towards the sphere.
“We’ll get no help from them,” declared the McKay bitterly. “They’re wild things and blind I think. Anyhow they wouldn’t know a rivet from a cocoanut.”
“Is there no way we can get out ourselves,” Sally asked with sudden desperation.
“None I fear, Fraulein,” declared the Doctor gently. “The door is rivetted down and the bottom—well, that is impossible.”
“What’s that!” snapped the McKay. “Is there an entrance in the bottom?”
“No entrance Herr Kapitan but the bottom of the sphere is not solid as the sides. It has four layers of steel plates with supports between which will resist equal pressure. Each can be unscrewed in turn to enable us to get at the machinery which operates the claws, the dredges, and the drill.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell us that before?” the McKay blazed out at him.
“I never thought to see the bathysphere upon its side which alone makes such exit possible,” protested the Doctor, “and, since our arrival here, our every moment has been taken by watching these strange people; besides it would take two men a whole day’s hard work to remove enough of the machinery to get out that way and we have oxygen to last us now an hour and a half only.”
“Reduce the oxygen supply to half. Show a light on the bottom, and give me a screw driver,” ordered the McKay.
“It is useless, Herr Kapitan,” the Doctor’s voice was apathetic. “If we had six and a half hours oxygen as when we were first cut off it might be done. But now—no. You will tear your fingers for nothing. The hundreds of screws and joints to be—”
“Do as I tell you—I’m taking charge here now.” The McKay pulled another torch from his pocket and thrust it into Sally’s hand. “Take that. I brought it on the off chance the lights might fail. The more light we have now the better.”
The Doctor shrugged. “I have a dozen torches here in case of need but this attempt is useless. We shall be dead before—”
“Stop talking, damn you. It uses oxygen and every ounce of that is precious now. Issue four torches and keep the rest in reserve. Everyone’s to remain silent till we’re out. Nicky! Axel! Bozo! You’re to remain in the back of the sphere, away from its bottom. You two girls hold the torches—give you something to think about. Vladimir, you’re the strong man come and help move the plates as we get them up. Doctor, how many screw drivers have you got in your chest?”
“One large—one small.”
“Good, give me the large one then—thanks. Use the other yourself. You know the machinery. Silence now—get busy.”
They obeyed him without questioning his commands. He stripped off his coat, flung it down to kneel on and began to attack the screws in the sphere’s wooden floor.
In five minutes they had torn away the central floor boards but it took ten to remove the first layer of steel plates which was immediately beneath and only then did the McKay realise that the Doctor had real reason for his pessimism. They were faced with literally hundreds of small girders and slender rods all criss-crossed and mixed up with wheels. It looked a sheer impossibility to get them out under two hours at least and there were two more similar barriers to cross before they could reach the outer air.
The Doctor had already produced his whole set of tools and spread them out on the underside of the sphere. With these and frantic fingers they attacked the jungle of steel mechanism.
After twenty minutes the McKay was streaming with sweat and the Doctor blowing like a grampus. The air was already beginning to get thick and stuffy owing to the reduced supply of oxygen.
“Axel! Nicky! Take over,” ordered the McKay when half an hour had passed and he sank back panting against the side of the sphere.
Nicky was quick and efficient at the job, but Axel’s beautiful slim hands had never been created for such work. When he had watched the Count for two minutes the McKay called out, “Bozo—did you ever run a car?”
“Sure boss—I’ve known the inside of a flivver since I was ten.”
“Take over from Count Axel then.”
The big gunman shambled forward and flung himself eagerly upon the floor, but his hands were large and clumsy. He was painfully slow at unscrewing the complicated joints.
“Let me have a go,” whispered Camilla. “I’m good at screws. Meccano was my favourite nursery game.”
“Good girl! Take over from Bozo then.” The McKay wiped the dripping perspiration from his face.
Camilla proved a real asset. Her quick fingers slid in and out among the rods and Vladimir, just behind her, had all his work cut out to hand her spanners and pass the pieces she and Nicky freed into the back of the sphere where they were making a dump.
The whole of the work had to be carried out under the greatest difficulties. The sphere was only built to accommodate eight persons—the number in it at the present time—and each was supposed to sit in an allotted space which gave little play for movement. Its bulging sides allowed no additional freedom as these concave surfaces held all the instruments, the searchlight, the oxygen tanks, the fans, the trays of calcium chloride for absorbing moisture, and the even more important ones with soda lime in them for removing the poisonous excess of carbon dioxide from the air.
Now that the sphere lay on its side the broken chairs occupied valuable floor space despite the fact that Vladimir had smashed their slender wooden frames to matchwood to reduce their bulk. The members of the party who, in turn, were fighting so desperately to get at the mechanism under the floor had to be given elbow room as they knelt at their work. The torch-holders bent in cramped attitudes, shining the lights over their shoulders. Behind, the rest crouched or stood in strained positions, helpless but frantically anxious to glimpse what progress was being made.
Each time the workers were changed it necessitated their reliefs forcing their way through a crush that resembled a small section of the Black Hole of Calcutta. As the floor plates and pieces of machinery were passed back the press became even greater for, while the workers were unable to get more than their heads and their hands into the space which they had cleared, the awkward spiky dump of steel in the back of the sphere continued to occupy more room nearly every moment.
It took an hour to clear the first space between the quadruple floors, of machinery. Then the McKay and Doctor Tisch attacked the second lining of steel plates.
Their fingers were no longer as supple as when they started, and their hands were bruised and torn. The air was stale and foul so that they panted and gasped as they twisted and jerked at the screws. In consequence it took them nearly twenty minutes to get up the second floor.
Another mass of levers now barred their passage. Not so many but larger this time and more difficult to get at. In addition there was a square steel box in the centre of their path. It contained the dynamite and, immediately the lid was off, the slabs were passed carefully back. The Doctor and the McKay got the box out but when they had done so they both had to give up, and lay gasping for breath on the floor.
At the McKay’s order Sally and Vladimir tried their hands while Count Axel passed the freed material to the dump. Sally was nothing like as quick as Camilla and Vladimir was tempted into trying his strength instead of skill. He wrenched out two small rods with the assistance of a spanner, but the third only bent and caused them more trouble than they had experienced with half a dozen others put together, so the McKay put Camilla and Nicky on again, since they had done so well before.
Their partnership was not so successful this time. Nicky stuck to it gamely and d
id yeoman service but Camilla was so overcome now by the heavy atmosphere that she could hardly move her hands. The Doctor too seemed pretty done as he lolled uncomfortably, almost comatose, against the side of the sphere.
The McKay pushed Camilla aside and took her place. As he did so he called out to ask the time and, when Count Axel gave it to him, ordered the supply of oxygen to be reduced again by half. It seemed impossible that they could carry on at all with only a quarter of the normal allowance but he knew now for certain that they would never be able to free themselves in the three hours which was all that a half ration allowed them.
Count Axel, who felt his uselessness acutely, had secured another torch and, standing on tiptoe, took a look out of one of the ports. “These people,” he said slowly, with laboured breath, “are eating the fish raw—now.”
“Silence,” snapped the McKay angrily. He knew how infinitely precious every ounce of oxygen must be. As matters stood at present there seemed little enough chance of the supply holding out. Sally, lighting him at his work, felt too exhausted to be more than faintly disgusted at the mental picture which came into her mind that showed the host of blind grey ghouls greedily devouring the freshly killed fish.
Nicky’s brain conjured up a memory of some shots from an Eskimo film—Mala the Magnificent—in which the native actors had fed, with gluttonous delight on handfuls of warm blubber torn from the body of a captured seal; but his fingers never paused in their frantic efforts to loosen the joints of the machinery.
They Found Atlantis Page 24
