Death Hovers in the Darkness
The Doctor knew too what that thin curving line of falling cable meant. Someone in the ship above had jammed the lever into reverse when the bathysphere was running out at a speed far greater than had ever been intended. The violence of the check had proved too great a strain. It had snapped somewhere in its mile of length above their heads. There was nothing to be done—nothing. He switched out his torch.
The black, utterly impenetrable, darkness closed down upon them as if they had suddenly been struck blind. Then a glimmer of greyness showed the ports and, as their eyes recovered from the change, they saw once more than eternal devil dance of ghostly shapes in the dull luminosity carried by the strange creatures of the deep.
Each one of the seven conscious persons in the sphere now guessed what had happened and each was so appalled that none of them could speak. Subconsciously they understood that they had been caught—trapped beyond any possible hope of escape—in this small circular steel chamber nine hundred fathoms down; but for a little their brains refused to take it in—could not admit it—and rebelled against the terrible thought that they had been severed completely from all the life that they had previously known —with utter unalterable finality.
A horrible unnatural silence lasted for almost two minutes, each of which seemed like the passing of many days. Stark ungovernable fear held them in its grip like a physical paralysis then Count Axel relaxed a little and sighed heavily.
He had always hoped that when death came to him he would be able to meet it with a bow. He was not afraid of death because he had unshakable faith in the survival of his Kama. He had enjoyed his present life but his principal regret to leave it would be that he must pass that strange barrier which blots out all but the vaguest intuitive memories of earlier experiences before a soul is born again. Now, he was not so certain that he would be able to greet death as he had always planned. It was one thing to die by a bullet, drowning, a street accident perhaps, or even after a long and painful illness during which such fortitude as he could muster had been displayed, but quite another to sit there cramped and hopeless waiting for his companions to show the first signs of madness and eventually to die a screaming maniac, fighting for the last breath of air.
'We're going to die!' said Sally at last, in a whisper that held a terrible conviction, and then again, her voice rising to a shriller note, 'We're going to die!'
'Steady m'dear,' the McKay's arm was still round her shoulders and he pressed her nearer. He would have given anything in the world had he been safe and possessed it then to be able to think of some words to comfort her, but his tongue was dry in his mouth and there was no shred of hope that he could offer.
'I'm not going to die! I won't! I won't! Help! Help! Help!' screamed Nicky down his useless telephone.
Vladimir released Camilla from his embrace, turned and struck out twice into the darkness behind him. He barked the knuckles of his right fist badly on the ice cold steel of the sphere but the left caught Nicky behind the ear. Suddenly his frantic gibbering ceased. He choked and slid down on to the body of the still unconscious gunman.
'Oh what have you done!' moaned Camilla.
'I could not wait by and see such behaving in your presence.' The Prince excused himself soberly then he added in a meditative way with no trace of laughter in his tone. 'Often I have wished to kick that Nicky in his so colourful pants but never did I foresee this kicking with so little happiness to myself.'
'Oh Vladimir—Vladimir,' Camilla suddenly reached up in the darkness and put her arms round his neck. 'Can't you do something—please, please—get us out of this.'
'Ah my so beautiful,' his deep vibrant voice held a soft 199
caressing note. 'If it were my life only—it would not be much to give but—but—what can I do?'
'We're going to die,' said Sally again in that toneless whisper and the McKay felt her tremble as she leaned against him. He was still searching his mind desperately for one ray of hope when Vladimir exclaimed:
'The dynamite! All that we have let us drill into the rocks. The explosion beneath our bottoms may drive us sky high!'
'Absurd,' grunted the McKay. 'The electric wires snapped with the cable, so we can't work the drill or explode the charges, and anyhow I doubt if there's enough H.E. in Chatham to blow this ball up through five-thousand feet of water. Besides, even if one could perform such a miracle we'd only sink again immediately.'
'Gniidige Hertzogin, Fraulein Sally. Herrshaft,' the German addressed them with his usual formality. 'I make my apologies now to all. I haf trusted in the cable being able to withstand any strain and haf been proved in error. That was a miscalculation for which I too shall pay with my life since there is no help for us. One tank of oxygen will last forty-five minutes for eight people—an hour perhaps if we use it sparingly. There are twelve tanks but we have been down four hours and have used five and a half tanks already. The remaining six and a half tanks will keep alive the eight persons here six and a half hours only.'
'As a warship has come to our assistance—they may try to hook us up with their end of the cable,' muttered the McKay yet even as he spoke he realised the absurdity of the suggestion. If sufficient cable still remained attached to the drums for the broken end to reach the bottom the ship was still drifting and, since they had no means of communication, the chances were a thousand to one against the people above lowering the cable over the exact spot where the bathysphere had come to rest. Besides it would be the supreme irony of all if such an attempt succeeded. They were sealed and riveted into the sphere and had a great hook been dangling before the windows at that moment they would have been completely powerless to reach and attach it.
The Doctor shook his head. 'All the ships in the world might be above but they could not help us in any way. We can do nothing—nothing but wait until death comes.'
'You are wrong, Doctor,' said Count Axel quietly. 'A little manipulation of your instruments and we should barely live out another minute. Surely that would be more merciful to us all.'
The horrid silence came again as each debated with themselves if they should choose slow or instant death but it was broken by Camilla almost immediately.
'No, no,' she cried, shuddering in Vladimir's embrace. 'No! I can't bear to die!'
'I had already thought of the Herr Count's suggestion,' announced the Doctor heavily.
'Sally m'dear,' questioned the McKay, 'it's a rotten business I know—but what about it? *
'We're going to die,' repeated Sally with rising hysteria. 'We're going to die! We're going to die!
He pressed her hand and let his head sway from side to side a little with the intensity of his frustration.
'Please,' he murmured, 'now or later?'
She did not reply and the sudden impression reached him that she was going off her head with shock and fear already. Camilla's terrified outbursts were more normal than this dreadful repetition of the one hopeless phrase. He shook her roughly.
'Sally d'you hear me—did you hear what I said?'
'What is it?' she asked vaguely and then, as though waking from a dream: 'Oh God! What are we going to do?'
'Listen m'dear,' he said gently, 'we're trapped here. The cable's snapped—get that? And there's no way out. We haven't a hope in Hades so it's a choice if we hang on for about six hours—then suffocate, or if we take it now— standing up as it were—since the Doctor can black us out in about a minute.'
'I don't care,' her voice was dull—apathetic. 'We're going to die—that's what it is. We're going to die and we just can't do anything to stop it.'
A groan came up from the darkness in their rear. At first they thought it to be Nicky, but it was Bozo coming round. Axel and Vladimir fumbled about until they could haul him into a sitting position. The Doctor flashed his torch to help them, but when they had propped him up his head sagged forward and he apparently passed out again.
Then Nicky, who had come to as his body was lifted 201
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br /> from on top of the gunman's sniffed, choked on a sob and muttered, 'Undo the door—can't you. Let's take a sporting chance that the air bubble from this thing carries us to the surface.'
They could not see the Doctor's eloquent shrug but he spoke a moment later. 'The door has been riveted down from the outside, we could not open it even if our lives depended on it and we were in the air above. Here, even if we had the power to do so, which we have not, the in rush of water would compress the air to a bubble no larger than a football and crush us flat.'
Camilla was crying quietly on Vladimir's broad chest. 'I dont want to die,' she sobbed, 'I don't want to—something may happen—it must.'
Nothing could happen. Count Axel on her other side, the Doctor, Vladimir, the McKay all knew that.
'Who's snatched my rod?' A gruff voice came from by the doorway. It was Bozo whose wits were slowly returning to him. 'Put on the light damn you—the boss'll grill you all for this when we get back on deck.'
'I'm afraid there's been an accident,' Count Axel told him quietly. 'Your friends were careless in reversing the crane after they had let us come down with a rush.'
'Is—that—so? Playin' a joke on me eh—I'll learn them plenty when we hit the surface.'
'I only wish you might have the opportunity, but unfortunately the cables broken and we're on the bottom here— stuck.'
'The hell we are!' Bozo lurched drunkenly to his feet, hit his head on the roof of the sphere and swore profanely-then bellowed: 'Where's that lousy Doctor. Come on—get busy. You've got to get us up.'
'I—I wish with all my heart I could,' Doctor Tisch stammered, 'but the Herr Count is quite correct. The cable has broken and we are at rest on the sea bottom—I can do nothing and no help can reach us here.'
'Hi! quit bluffin' Doctor.' Bozo's voice had suddenly gone scared. 'That's not straight—is it?'
'I speak quite truthfully,' the Doctor assured him. 'We face death. There is no alternative. At most we shall all be dead in seven hours.'
'An' you've let me in fer this—have you? All right! I'll 202
mince you first a piece if I've got to die like a rat in a trap.
The gunman threw his heavy body in the direction from which the Doctor's voice had come. Camilla and Sally clutched nervously at the McKay. This fighting in the pitchy blackness distracted their thoughts for a moment yet added to the macabre horror of their situation.
The Doctor grunted as Bozo landed on him, but he still held his torch and switched it on. Vladimir gripped the big gunman by the scruff of the neck and with his tremendous strength hauled him off as if he were only a puppy. Then flung him to the floor.
'Rat is what you are,' declared the Prince contemptuously. 'Open your face again and I will beat you to a pulping.'
Bozo squirmed into a sitting position and sat there hunched, staring with wide eyes into the terrifying darkness. He would have taken on the Prince for a tussle in free air but the appalling finality of the calamity was just beginning to penetrate his dull brain. They were to die then— all of them—like rats in a trap and there was nothing they could do about it—nothing at all. A sort of terrified coma gripped him as, for the first time in his animal existence, he began to visualise certain death in the agony of suffocation.
No one spoke then for a little and the silence was only broken by Camilla's sobbing. She tried to stop but she could not. The great fear seemed to be there right inside her somewhere in the pit of her stomach reaching up and dragging at her very heart.'
'It's true you know—we're going to die,' Sally murmured again almost as if talking to herself.
'Everyone's got to die some time,' said the McKay soberly, 'we're only anticipating the natural course of things a bit m'dear—that's all.'
Camilla heard them and shuddered. Everyone had to die some time of course but she had never paused to face the thought that death must come one day to herself; and here it was hovering over her, in that fearful darkness that could be felt, and seemed to press with the gentlest persistence on her skin. She had taken such a harmless joy in all the flattery and adulation, the handsome lovers and the lovely clothes. Perhaps she might have done more good if she had spent less time amusing herself, but a special department of the Hart estate gave away enormous sums each mourn in response to genuine appeals for charity which had been properly investigated, and she had never harmed anyone wilfully in all her life. Both she and Sally had been brought up very quietly, hardly allowed to see anyone or go out into the world at all, until they were twenty-one, in order to protect the young heiress from fortune hunters. They were only twenty-three now and so had had barely two years of glorious freedom.
It was unfair—unjust to be cut off like this when life was only starting, Camilla felt, and impotent rage momentarily conquered her fear. Never again to admire her own beauty in the dressing-table glass while the maid did her hair. Never again to be able to display her supple rounded limbs, while sunbathing, to the admiration of all beholders. No more laughter, no more flirtations, no more joyous passionate love-making, but darkness—death—and decay. She thought of her exquisite, so carefully tended body, wasted, useless, rotting there, turned to a mass of putrescent stinking carrion, and sobbed afresh.
Aeons of time seemed to drift by while they sat huddled together motionless, their brains racing madly towards the borderland of insanity, or steeped almost to numbness now in blank despair.
The McKay glanced at the luminous dial of his wrist watch and announced: 'It's ten past one. We've been down here just on an hour.'
Nicky laughed, unnaturally, shrilly: 'It's cocktail time— cocktail time up there,' and they knew him to be on the verge of a breakdown.
'I've got a flask of brandy,' the McKay offered. 'I never go on any sort of risky business without one—here, have a pull at it if you like.' As he reached behind him in the darkness to hand over the flask he hoped that a good stiff peg might hold Nicky together for a little longer. He was dreading more than anything the time which must inevitably come when someone's nerve would snap.
'Thanks,' Nicky grabbed the flask gratefully and held it to his mouth.
'You poor dear,' Sally turned her head which was resting on the McKay's shoulder. She spoke normally again now. 'How right you were in trying to dissuade us from coming on these dives. You always foresaw that one of them would end in a tragedy. What rotten luck for you that just this one time you're with us should be the time the cable breaks.'
He shrugged. 'It can't be helped, m'dear. I'm lucky, con-siderin what I've been through, to reach the age I have— and anyhow I've had a lot of fun. It's yourself, and Camilla, and Vladimir and Nicky who're hardest hit. You're all young people who had a right to expect many happy years ahead.'
'You're a dear,' she murmured and snuggled closer to him.
Another hour drifted by while the lights of the luminous fishes came and went with monotonous regularity outside the ports. Inside the sphere they sat cramped yet motionless sunk in a hopeless apathy.
'I wonder,' said Count Axel meditatively, after he had asked, and been told, the time, 'I wonder how long will elapse before they find our bodies here?'
'From now till doomsday,' replied the McKay briefly.
'Oh no, my dear Captain, you are quite wrong. I should say fifty years at the utmost and it is possible that our human remains may be brought to the surface long before that.'
'Why should you think so?'
'Remember that before our unfortunate descent today the Doctor had already proved his theory to be correct. Slinger, Ardow, the telephonist Oscar, who has had a most fortunate escape by the way, and doubtless all the members of the crew, know that the remains of the Atlantean capital do really lie beneath them. This great discovery is now the property of the whole world; other, greater, bathyspheres with stronger cables will be built and new expeditions will find ready financial backing since that is always forthcoming when there are definite prospects of finding gold. Then the advance of science is so rapid thes
e days, that every ruin in these waters will be mapped and examined They are bound to discover this rusty ball before they are done and it would not surprise me at all to learn—if I could see into the future—that before twenty years are past the sphere will be a greatly prized exhibit in some museum anc our bodies buried with considerable honour in-'
'Stop! cried Camilla wildly. 'Stop! How can you!'
'I am sorry Madame,' he apologised turning his head to smile in the darkness. 'I had hoped to distract your thoughts a little.'
'Don't, please,' she begged. 'It's bad enough as things are but to hear you calmly speculating on what may happen to our corpses will drive me out of my mind. Besides-'
'Besides what, Madame?' he prompted her.
'I've just remembered,' her voice went tremulous again. 'The Doctor warned us when we first went down that we should not talk too much, because the more we did the more—the more oxygen we used up.'
'I know, I hoped that you had forgotten that, because it had just occurred to me again. I was really trying to reduce our supply and, automatically, the time we still have to wait.'
'Camilla's right!' snapped Nicky, 'Camilla's right! For God's sake shut up.'
'I will,' agreed the Count—'since it is her wish.'
The silence was longer this time, so long that they almost seemed to have been asleep and suffering in some fantastic nightmare when the Doctor spoke:
'Nine out of our twelve tanks are used now.'
'Would it not be better if we made an end then?' Count Axel suggested again.
'No,' cried Nicky promptly. 'That's suicide and I won't have it. It may surprise you to know it but I'm religious in a kind of way. I don't mind telling you now it—it can't get any further but all that dope about my being an American and graduate of a swell college is sheer huey. I'm only half American through my mother and my father was North country English. I was born in a London slum. I ran away from home to better myself and I did by golly—but they were a religious pair and deep down in me their teaching stuck. We'll all have to go before the Judge's seat when the last trumpet sounds and that scares me more than the thought of death—I'll not add suicide to all the lying and cheating I've had to do to get up to where I got.'
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