Everybody thought it was a fine idea until the McKay remarked that Nicky would have plenty of time to practise crooning his theme song to the Mermaid—in the Falklands.
An angry silence ensued after this piece of acidity and, when coffee had been served they commenced their gloomy speculations once again.
The McKay was asked if he had seen any shipping during the day, and he replied, abruptly:
'You would have heard about it before this if I had—I didn't set eyes on a masthead and I'm beginning to doubt if anything will ever come near enough to us in these unfrequented waters to be any good.'
'Oh dear, oh dear,' Sally looked across at him despairingly. 'What are we going to do—we can't just sit still and let things take their course.'
' 'Fraid there's no alternative m'dear until these gunmen get fed up with their job and slacken off. There's no sign of that yet though. A better disciplined set of men I've never seen. I tried to speak to one this afternoon but he just quietly pointed his pistol at me and he would have used it too, I believe, if I hadn't stopped.'
'Oh, they're well disciplined I admit,' Camilla conceded. 'Quiet as mice although they're always close at hand. It's extraordinary how polite they are too in stepping aside and that sort of thing when we go aft to the bathysphere, despite the fact they never open their mouths. They're nothing like I've always pictured gangsters and hoodlums to be at all.'
'They are not like ordinary gangsters,' said Count Axel with conviction. 'But neither is their Chief like any ordinary boss racketeer.
Nicky nodded. 'If he cleans up on Camilla's packet he'll be the biggest shot since A1 Capone was put behind the bars."
'He won't—but he'll come back,' Sally insisted, 'and we've just got to think of some way to save ourselves before he turns up.'
The now sickening subject was miserably debated again but by the time Slinger arrived with his guards to see them to bed they had only become exceedingly irritable without having produced a single new idea.
On Wednesday all of them except the McKay went down again in the bathysphere at nine o'clock, taking with them a picnic luncheon. The ship covered about six miles in a new direction with continual stops to haul them up 200 feet before proceeding and then lowering them to the bottom again; it was nearly six o'clock when they returned to the surface, but, despite the usual excitement which always seemed to possess them for an hour or two after each dive, they had nothing startling to report.
Several new varieties of deep sea creatures had appeared in the beam and they had seen more Mermen apparently riding their swift fish horses to unknown destinations, but the bottom they had traversed was all bare volcanic rock with the exception of two new shell strewn valleys, and there was nothing to indicate the presence of the lost city for which they were searching.
'D'you know you've been cooped up in that thing for close on nine hours, the McKay asked Sally as they went in for their belated evening swim.
'Really,' she replied casually. 'It doesn't seem as though we had beenj down half that time to me. Every second of it is so vitally interesting, I even forgot to eat more than one of the sandwiches we took down so I'm just dying for dinner now.'
'But isn't there a most appalling fug—I wonder you haven't all got splitting headaches in spite of the oxygen that keeps you from passing out.'
'No, it's amazing really. The air in the sphere was as fresh when we came out of it just now, as when we climbed in at nine o'clock. The Doctor allows one litre of oxygen per person per minute to escape from the tanks and that seems to do the trick.
'How about the temperature—isn't it darn near freezing?'
'Not inside. It drops about six degrees in the first two-thousand feet, but after that you don't get the benefit of the sun anyhow and it doesn't alter so quickly, two degrees in the next thousand and only one degree for the last two-thousand to the bottom if I remember right. It was never lower than sixty-six degrees today, the Doctor said so as we were coming up, although outside it's ever so much colder and if you touch the walls of the sphere they feel like ice.
After] dinner the McKay was asked if he had sighted any ships during the day and he informed his fellow prisoners that at about two o'clock a fishing boat had tried to come alongside—probably in the hope of selling some of its catch.
'I've had this all packed up ever since Sunday,' he added producing a flat tobacco tin from his pocket. 'It contains a full report of our situation and a request for immediate assistance addressed to the Chief of Police in the Azores, also a fair sized bank note to ensure its delivery and a promise of more substantial reward to follow if help is secured for us without delay. I meant to chuck it down to one of the fishermen if such a chance occurred but unfortunately Captain Ardow was on the bridge and he ordered this little craft to sheer off, through his megaphone before it was anywhere near the distance I could throw the tin.'
Sally was cheered a little to think that although he had said nothing of this idea he was exercising his wits to plan such measures which might yet lead to their release but she started in on her old cry that Kate would return with diabolical intent in a few days' time and that they had simply got to do something definite before he put in an appearance.
'Yes,' Camilla sighed, 'do you realise that four whole days have gone and we haven't thought of a single practical idea between us? In three days now my death will be announced and then we shall be really up against it. Oh, what are we going to do?
Count Axel Wins a Trick
The nightly gloom would have descended on them all again had not the McKay made a determined stand against it. He was utterly sick of the topic of their captivity and these endless discussions as to whether the faked will would be successfully contested and whether or no Oxford Kate would return to perpetrate some new villainy. They had, he felt, exhausted every possible avenue of speculation and now their only chance lay in waiting, with as much patience as they could muster, for some opportunity such as he had only missed by a narrow margin when the fishing boat had endeavoured to come alongside that afternoon.
Despite the fact that their uncertain future was dominating all their thoughts once more, he insisted on discussing the search for Atlantis which was now actually in progress.
Doctor Tisch rose readily enough to the bait and, after a few moments, Count Axel, guessing the McKay's purpose, loyally came to his assistance. In a quarter of an hour the others too found themselves examining the contour chart, plotted by the Doctor, of the ocean bottom from the dives they had already made, and listening to him with a revival of keenness as he poured out a mass of geological information.
He maintained that the sea floor was exactly as he had expected to find it and that he was not in the least discouraged by their lack of immediate success in locating the Atlantean city. In the cataclysm it might well have slipped laterally with the whole surface of the land a mile or so one way or another just as it had sunk downward at least a mile below its original level, but wherever it was all the buildings would have slid in the same direction and if they could sight one they would find all the others piled up as a great mass of monoliths and boulders in that immediate area.
'What proof have you got geologically that the sea bed here was ever dry land at all?' the McKay enquired.
The Doctor placed his stubby forefinger on an irregular patch of lightish blue in the centre of his map of the North Atlantic. The Azores were well inside it and it ran down towards the northern coastline of Brazil:
'Here,' he said, 'is the Dolphin ridge. The whole of that must once haf been land. All geologists are agreed on that. The inequalities of its surface—mountains—valleys—could not haf been made by deposit of sediment or submarine elevation according to the known laws. They could only haf been carved by agencies acting above the water level—rain —rivers and so on.'
The McKay studied the contour chart based on the bathysphere's dives again. 'There don't seem to be many mountains and valleys here,' he said.
'That Herr Kapita
n, is local only. Here we are, as I anticipated, above a rolling plain.'
'In that case surely there's an easier method for you to conduct your search than by bobbing up and down in the bathysphere every quarter of a mile. The range of vision from that thing must be very limited. You might be within fifty yards of a great group of stones and never suspect their existence. In fact you might criss-cross this area every day for months without actually landing on the place you're looking for. There is an electric sounding machine fitted in this ship—why in the world don't you make use of it?'
'How does that work?' asked Sally.
'Eh!' he glanced across at her. 'Oh! a compression hammer released by electricity strikes on the ship's bottom and the echo, thrown back from the sea floor, is picked up by microphone, amplified and recorded. The longer the echo takes to come back the deeper the water is in that place.
The Doctor nodded. 'But tell me please how that would help us. To know the depths is of little use—we shall only discover by actual sight.'
'Listen,' the McKay leaned forward. 'These electric sounding machines are pretty accurate you know. They'll give you your depth to within half a fathom every time and the sea bottom we're over seems to be rather like a succession of gentle sloping downs; anyhow there's nothing jagged about it. Now you're hunting for a group of great stones twenty or thirty feet high at least—if not a hundred. All right then, if we sail up and down working the electric depth recorded as frequently as possible and it suddenly starts to show sharp variations that ought to be the place you want. You stop the ship at once and down you go in your sphere—see what I mean?'
'Himmel, yes! Why did I not think,' the Doctor cried with his fat face beaming. 'I thank you Herr Kapitan. That will be far quicker than our dives every quarter mile. Tomorrow we will try-'
'Time please ladies and gentlemen—time,' called Slinger with sardonic humour, suddenly appearing in the doorway with his men. And thus ended another day.
By seven o'clock next morning the fanatically eager little Doctor was up and dressed, and the moment he was let out of his cabin he sought Captain Ardow. The taciturn Russian made no difficulties and agreed with cold courtesy to his using the electric depth recorder. For four and a half hours the Doctor sat over it as the ship steamed at his request, round and round an outward spiral in a series of ever increasing circles. Depths from 850 to 902 fathoms were recorded, but the upward or downward curve of the graph never showed any sudden alteration. It was obvious that they were sailing round and round above the slopes of a rolling plain. Then at 11.30, more than seven miles south of the point from which they had started, the soundings suddenly became erratic. 901—893—900—890—888—897—. After which the echo did not reach the microphone clearly since the instrument only registered uneven scratches. The Doctor left it at the run to stop the ship proceeding further.
A quarter of an hour afterwards the bathysphere went under water, only the cautious McKay remaining, of his party, in the ship.
At 1.32 they had reached bottom and a message came up that they wished to rise 200 feet and then be towed a quarter of a mile towards the east, the drift of the ship having carried them to the west, despite the efforts of the officer on the bridge to keep, as nearly as possible on the spot at which they had halted.
The McKay was just finishing lunch when the movement had been executed and, as he came on deck, again, he wrinkled up his nose and sniffed a little. The sky was still serenely blue but somehow he didn't like it. There was an uncanny stillness in the air. Without the least hesitation he turned aft and, stepping over the rope barriers at the risk of being shot, addressed the two gunmen who were standing by the wireless house:
'Captain McKay presents his compliments to Captain Ardow and says he had better haul the bathysphere up at once because we're in for dirty weather.'
The men stared at him for a moment but, in a clear firm voice he repeated his message then turned his back and walked away to show that he had no hostile intentions, upon which one of them went off to find the Russian.
No reply came back, but the clanking of the great crane, very shortly after, informed the McKay that his advice had been accepted. He glanced at his wrist watch, the time was 1.45 p.m., then again at the sky. It was still perfectly clear but he did not like the uncanny hush that had fallen.
At 2.15 a small black cloud appeared on the horizon. The McKay studied it with grim foreboding. By 2.30 the whole sky in that quarter had become dark and threatening. There was still an hour to go before the bathysphere was due to reach the surface so the McKay again risked a bullet by telling the gunmen that, orders or no orders, he meant to go aft and take charge in the hope of expediting its arrival.
One of the men held him up with a pistol but the other went off to find Slinger and a few moments later returned with his consent to the McKay being allowed aft to superintend operations.
Having reached the scene of action he took the deck telephone from the man who was in communication with the bathysphere and shouted down it:
'Below there?'
'Yes,' Oscar's voice came up over the line clear and untroubled from 3,000 feet beneath him.
'Captain McKay presents his compliments to Doctor Tisch. There's bad weather ahead. Tell the Doctor we mean to reel you up at top speed and that he's to inform the ladies they have no need to be alarmed if they get a bit of a bumping—got that?
'Jawohl, Herr Kapitan,' came the rather scared acknowledgement.
'Right. Now we'll have no time to coil the telephone hose down so it may kink and cause the wires to break. If you are cut off you'll know that's what has happened so sit tight and don't worry.'
'Jawohl, Herr Kapitan, Oscar replied in an even fainter voice and, despite the McKay's injunctions not to worry, if Oscar could have seen the great black clouds which now obscured the sun he would have been very worried indeed. The bathysphere was not built to be hurled about in a violent storm or the cable intended to take the strain of spasmodic jerks from a ship pitching and tossing in heavy seas.
The McKay thrust the instrument back into the operators hands and began to snap out orders. At first the seamen regarded him with hostile surprise as an interfering civilian, but they very soon understood that they were dealing with a man who knew his business. The crane began to reel in the cable at its utmost speed, a man with a sharp knife was set to slash the ties holding the rubber hose to it as they flashed past, and the hose itself was hauled on board coil after coil in wild confusion by all the hands that could be mustered. It wreathed and knotted in great loops and festoons despite their efforts to control it but the McKay felt that it mattered little if the wires it contained were broken in consequence. His one concern was to get the sphere up before it became impossible to land the party.
The sea began to heave in a long rolling swell, the sinister moaning of a distant fast travelling wind reached them; great heavy single drops of rain hit the deck with a sharp crack then, at ten minutes to three, the storm burst with the bathysphere still 1,500 feet under water.
The crew may have been the riff-raff of the seven seas who had accepted quadruple wages to shut their eyes to any irregularities which might occur on this unusual voyage, but they were sailors by profession and understood the brotherhood of the sea. That lifelong enemy of them all—the ocean—had risen against them. There was a job of work to be done and though the rain sheeted down in cataracts soaking them to the skin they stuck to it without a thought of questioning their unofficial orders. The McKay stood there short and square and grim at the after rail but cloaked in all the natural authority which came from years of comamnd at sea and, to his occasional shouts there came back a cheerful 'Ay, ay, Sir!' as they jumped to do his bidding.
The ship was pitching heavily and every few moments a wave hit the stern with a loud thump, sending clouds of spray over the streaming men as they fought and struggled with the seemingly endless hose pipe. For one moment the McKay considered sending a message to Captain Ardow asking that the vessel
should be headed due west to bring them under the lee of Pico Island but any movement of the ship would mean added strain upon the cable, so he did not dare to risk it.
The wind increased to half a gale, moaning through the rigging. The McKay cocked an anxious eye at the masthead to judge their degree of pitch and was not comforted by what he saw. Captain Ardow had the ship just under way and head on to the storm but the waves were breaking over the bow and each time their main bulk surged below the hull the stern lifted right out of the water. The bathysphere was up to 500 feet, but the McKay knew that the strain on the cable must be appalling. It might snap at any moment. He sprang up a ladder into the control room of the crane house.
'We'll have to play her like a fish,' he told the engineer. 'Steady now—watch for my signals,' then he clung to the doorway—peering out through the sheeting rain to judge the lift of the ship and raising or lowering his arm in accordance with it.
As the stern was buoyed up on each successive wave crest the bathysphere cable was allowed to run out fifty to one hundred feet, then as the strain slackened it was checked and, when they sank into the trough, reeled in with the utmost rapidity.
For close on half an hour the crane man played the bathysphere under the McKay's directions like a salmon trout while the ship rode through the storm, but at last they got it to the surface and now the most difficult part of their task began. They had to land the sphere on its steel supports without staving it in against the girders.
The risk entailed in this proceeding was so considerable that the McKay was almost inclined to leave the sphere dangling fifty feet under water, despite the awful buffeting that its inmates must be receiving, but he had no idea how long their oxygen supply would hold out. The storm might well continue to increase in violence and not blow itself out for forty-eight hours. It was certain now that it would no abate that day and if he left them there they might all be dead by morning.
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