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 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 arm 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 70
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.
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 table—to be fixed, they saw their first fish.
'Oh look,' exclaimed Camilla, 'aren't they lovely!' It was only small fry but the iridescent 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 iridescence. A squid, goggle eyed, pouched 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 iridescent 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.
A
t 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. Here 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 mouthpiece.
'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 today. 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.'
'Of which you are a master Count—I suspect.'
'And you Madame an apt pupil—as you have proved.'
'But travel is not the only thing in life.'
'By no means. I am a poor man and so have little choice but to wander as economically as I can from one pleasant spot to another. If I were rich I should spend at least half the year in London, Paris, and New York. In each—if I were very rich of course—I should keep a fine house in the old tradition. It would be no more expensive than occupying luxury suites at the big hotels and infinitely more comfortable. I should stock my cellars with great wines and appoint three Cordon Bleus to be my chefs; for the lure of a superlatively fine table rarely fails to attract the great brains of the world. Artists, scientists, men of letters, diplomats, statesmen, great beauties, prima donnas and all the men and women who are moulding the world that we shall know tomorrow would be my guests in carefully selected parties where each would be invited to meet some other that they wished to know.
'As I am blessed with a tolerant disposition I should doubtless make many real friends among them and learn much of their hopes and fears, also perhaps something of those fascinating hidden motives, of which the great public never know, but which actuate the policies of men of power and often change the whole lives of many million people. Especially too I would seek for struggling talent among young people and by my introductions bring it to the light. That is a selfish thought perhaps but few pleasures can be so harmless or bring such satisfaction as being the means of helping people of ability to recognition. Then, when I tired of all their chatter I should be more selfish still and, leaving them for a period, sail away to refresh myself by visiting the marvels of India, Egypt, China or Peru.'
Camilla knew that he was really speaking of the life he would make for her if she would marry him. It would be wonderful, she thought, to be a real Grande Dame, and a personality among the people who mattered in the world instead of just a rich girl throwing costly parties for hordes of nonentities whom she hardly knew. She saw herself receiving at the head of a great staircase in some old ducal mansion, accepting the homage of the writers and painters who, by her patronage, she had brought from poverty to fame, or listening in her salon to inventors and explorers as they told her of their latest discoveries before disclosing their secrets to the common world.
Axel was not boasting about his genius for friendship, she felt sure of that. His personality and breeding would secure him a place on equal terms with people of any rank, his brain and learning enable him to converse with the most intelligent, and his sure taste gave him a ready sympathy towards all creators of real beauty in any form. Given the money to pay for the right setting Camilla was certain that he was capable of carrying his wife to almost any height of influence and importance. It would be fun to travel too with a man who possessed such a wide knowledge of the world yet never laboured his learning and, in addition, was such an even tempered and amusing companion. But there was one thing he had not mentioned so Camilla asked with a sly smile:
'Is that everything you want in life Count?'
'No Camilla,' he answered softly. 'As a connoisseur of all things beautiful I want you for my wife.'
Truly Count Axel was an artist in other things besides travel. The very syllables of her christian name coming so firmly but unexpectedly from him, was more effective than a score of platitudes.
There was a slight jolt as the bathysphere landed on its runners and next moment pandemonium reigned as the sailors on the platform attacked the bolts of the steel door with their heavy hammers.
Five minutes later Camilla was on deck again surrounded by her anxious friends.
'It was marvellous,' she exclaimed breathlessly. 'Absolutely wonderful—you've no idea.'
'Tell us,' they cried, 'did you see any fish!'
She threw back her golden head and gave way to peals of laughter, then still gurgling she turned to Axel. 'Listen to them 1 Did we see any fish 1 Scores my dear, hundreds, and every colour of the rainbow.'
'Do tell us about it,' pleaded Sally.
'I can't darl
ing. It's utterly impossible. It's another world, fairyland, heaven, I don't know. And the light—the brilliance of it—that amazing blue.'
'Light!—down there?' expostulated Nicky.
'Yes, yes, I can't explain it but it almost makes the sun-78
shine look pale by comparison, and it's not the tiniest bit frightening. I know one thing. Every time the bathysphere goes down again I'm going too. But I'm ravenous. It's getting on for three—have you all had lunch?'
They confessed that they had not, but had been hanging about on deck for . the last hour and a half wondering if they would ever see her alive again.
Even the taciturn little Doctor was cheerful over the belated meal that followed. It was his second descent in the sphere and, as on the first occasion off the Scillies, his apparatus had worked splendidly. Only a pint and a half of water had been found in the bathysphere's concave bottom after the dive and he saw no reason that he should not descend in it to much greater depths with equal safety.
After lunch Nicky cornered Sally. 'Look here,' he said, 'I want to talk to you.'
'All right,' Sally smiled. 'It's a free country—ship I mean. Come on deck and don't look so serious about it.*
'But I am serious,' he announced as soon as they had settled down. 'It's about Camilla.'
'How disappointing, I thought you were going to make love to me.'
'You didn't!'
'Of course I didn't. You are a fool Nicky. But quite apart from any question of making love you'd be far wiser at least to pretend a friendly interest in people for their own sakes when you want something out of them.'
'I didn't say that I wanted anything out of you.'
'But you do.
'Well yes—in a way—but I've been thinking a lot lately and what I want to talk to you about will benefit you too.'
Sally glanced suspiciously at his fine regular features and rather weak mouth. In a way she was sorry for Nicky, most women were when they did not fall desperately for his rather feminine good looks. She knew that his vanity and egoism were not entirely his own fault. Success had come to him when he was still too young to keep any sense of proportion. The flattery of the insincere but anxious to please artists who wanted minor parts in his pictures, and the adulation expressed in his feminine fan mail had gone to his head. Like others among the more sensible of her sex she remained quite untouched by what he believed to be his irresistible fascination for women, but had an instinct to mother him, and make allowances for his shortcomings which men, who mostly loathed him on sight, were quite unprepared to do.
They Found Atlantis lw-1 Page 8
