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 did 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.
Time passed. The air became thin and rarefied. It was as difficult to draw sufficient into their lungs as if they had been locked up for hours in the dry heat of the hottest room in a Turkish bath. Camilla said nothing but she had an awful feeling that instead of being about to faint again she was really dying now. She tried desperately hard to keep herself upright but her body suddenly went limp and she fell forward in a crumpled heap. Vladimir saw her and motioned to Bozo to take his place then, as the gunman crawled painfully forward, he lifted Camilla tenderly in his arms, kissed her gently on the cheek, and propped her up against the side of the sphere next to the oxygen tanks where she would reap the benefit of more than her fair share of their precious supply.
After two hours and a half they had cleared the second lot of machinery and begun on the third floor, but the air had become positively stifling. Their breath came in quick short pants and an examination of the oxygen tanks showed that even with the reduced supply they had only three quarters of an hour to go. Another hour and they would certainly all be dead.
'We've got to get out—we've got to 1' wheezed the McKay, 'Come on Doctor—your turn now.'
The Doctor roused himself, wiped the sweat from his face and rolled over, then set to work again with a sudden spurt of energy. Nicky, whom he had just relieved, managed to reach the back of the sphere and then collapsed.
The McKay felt his fingers grow numb and clumsy. He hated the idea of giving up but knew that he must have another spell of rest, otherwise he would be delaying progress. He muttered to Bozo who took his place. The gunman's thick blunt hands were trembling and the sight of his slowness almost drove the McKay to a frenzy, but he worked doggedly at the job and his tools never slipped.
By the time they'd got the third floor up Count Axel knew from a quick glance at his watch that their limit of life was now reduced to a quarter of an hour. Without reference to the McKay he turned the oxygen valve a fraction lower—even another two minutes might mean the difference between safety and death, but if he could have seen the work still to be done from where he crouched behind the others, he would not have bothered.
A fresh barrier confronted them. Great reels of electric wires for exploding detonators from several hundred feet above the ocean bed—masses of springs and interlocking levers. The Doctor groaned but he and Bozo laboured on.
Their heads ached appallingly, their eyes s
eemed about to burst from their sockets, their tongues were swollen to almost double their normal size and filled their mouths so that they had to keep them wide open as they fought for the last breaths of oxygen.
Sally's torch slipped from her hand, smashed on the steel floor and went out. Then she slid to her knees and fell backwards. Bozo was the next to go. He had never fully recovered from the blow which Vladimir had given him eight hours before, soon after the cable had snapped, and now he just toppled over sideways like a shot rabbit.
Vladimir reached backwards and shook the Count out of his semi-torpor, then he pulled Bozo away from the mass of levers that still faced them and took his place. Axel crawled over the prostrate bodies and lit the workers with his torch.
The next to go was the Doctor. He had succeeded in freeing one of the big reels of wire so that they could actually see the last floor now, beyond which was the life-giving air. With a great effort he lifted the reel and, turning, placed it on Sally's chest, then without a murmur he fell forward senseless across her legs. The McKay picked up the spanner he had dropped.
It was now a nightmare scene. Enfeebled almost to fainting point from lack of air, the McKay and Vladimir still struggled with the many struts; Count Axel held the torch; while behind, five limp unconscious bodies lay huddled in grotesque and horrible disarray.
About eighteen inches square of the last floor was clear but the McKay knew now that he had failed. A dozen jutting rods had still to be removed before the smallest of them could force their way through the gap, and they were so weak that the floor itself would take another hour's work to get up. The oxygen was all but finished and death hovered waiting, in the shadows of the sphere to touch them on the shoulder.
He no longer had the strength for rapid action but he turned and whispered painfully:
'Count—dynamite—on your—knees.' He knew that what he was going to do was the most desperate hazard—they might all be blown to fragments, but what did that matter. Still there was a fraction less chance of the dynamite exploding through concussion if it were removed from contact with the surface of the sphere.
As Count Axel exerted all his remaining strength to lift 220
the box the McKay laid his hands on Vladimir's arm. 'Give me—your—gun.'
With slow fumbling fingers Vladimir pulled it from his pocket and passed it over.
The McKay took it and, as Count Axel focused the light again, he lifted it. The weapon seemed to weigh a ton, but he brought it up to a line where two of the bottom plates in the last floor were jointed—and fired.
In the confined space of the air-tight sphere the succession of explosions sounded as though a whole munition works was blowing up. For a second the McKay thought that, as he had feared, the shock of the vibration had set off the detonators. The automatic had dropped from his hand. The crash seemed to have burst his ear-drums. Vladimir was gasping out something but he could no longer hear.
He swayed feebly, peering through the little cloud of smoke that obscured the remaining machinery. Count Axel's arm was resting on his shoulder, still holding the torch. No hoped-for hole showed in the plates, only an irregular round dent on the joint that he had aimed at. It seemed now that their last hope had gone.
As the McKay crouched there, the echoes of the shots still reverberating in his ears, his head singing and whirling, his eyes suffused with blood, Vladimir picked up a heavy lever—the last that they had removed. Gripping it with both hands he lurched forward, his strength gone but his great weight behind the stabbing blow with which he jabbed the dented surface.
The bullets from the automatic had sprung the plates a trifle and Vladimir's last desperate effort completed the work. They only parted the sixteenth of an inch but an insistent hissing came like the sound of angels' music and they knew that the air was coming through.
For over an hour the McKay, Vladimir and Count Axel lay utterly exhausted and semi comatose, then they began to revive and one by one resuscitated the others. The air was still stifling hot, oppressive, and lifeless but it was just breathable, so they got to work again on the bottom of the sphere.
They took their time now; an hour and a quarter elapsed before they cleared the machinery and had removed sufficient plates in the last floor to crawl through.
The bottom of the sphere was tilted towards the harbour floor but, to their surprise, it was completely clear of fish. Hardly a trace remained of that mass of creatures which had flooded the whole space between the quayside and the sphere six hours before. The surface was just awash with a few inches of clear water.
Through the portholes they examined the quay. The great mob of greyish-white half-men were still there—all seated now on their haunches, peering blindly out of their almost colourless eyes in the direction of the bathysphere.
'I do not like the look of these people,' said the Doctor heavily.
The McKay shrugged. 'I'm afraid we've got to chance what they think of us. We can't stay here.'
'How long is it since we left the ship now?' asked Camilla.
After glancing at his watch Count Axel replied: 'We went down at 8.45, Madame. It is now 11.30 at night, so it is nearly fifteen hours and we survived nine of those hours on our remaining oxygen after we were cut off.' Before returning the watch to his pocket he methodically wound it up.
'Really?' Camilla's voice conveyed surprise and she added despondently, 'It seems as though it was at least a week.'
'I am a fasting man,' declared Vladimir, 'and would eat any old kipper that these so loathsome people can provide.'
Sally sighed. 'Need we go yet? There is our picnic lunch still that we've never had time even to think of eating. I'm so dead beat that I could drop. Can't we sleep here through the night?'
'Sorry m'dear,' the McKay laid his hand gently on her arm, 'I'm afraid we can't. Heaven alone knows what really happened to us but, as I see it, the sphere got caught in some sort of trawl and was dragged among these people's catch through a succession of locks which prevent this place being flooded. Anyhow, at any moment some flood gate may open and disgorge another haul. The crowd on the quay are probably sitting waiting for their next meal to arrive. If we remain here we may get caught in the sphere again—only next time, owing to the hole we've made in it—we'll all be drowned for certain.'
'The McKay is right,' urged Count Axel, 'and right too in his theory about the manner of our arrival here. Do you remember how gently we came to rest each time we sank to a lower level. We were probably falling down some deep, narrow shafts in which the catch of fish was packed so tightly together that those under us acted like a feather bed as we approached the bottom. Our brief sideways movements were perhaps when we were being dragged through tunnels which form the actual locks beyond each of which the pressure of water above lessens.'
'These people look so revolting,' demurred Camilla. 'It seems absurd in the face of what we've gone through—but somehow I'd much rather stay in the old sphere a bit longer.'
'We daren't risk it,' the McKay insisted. 'We'd have to abandon ship in any case in a few hours when our food and drink runs out, even if there were no danger of being engulfed by another mass of fish. I don't want to be unkind but just imagine that is going to happen in above five minutes' time and that as the water gushes up through the opening we've made, an octopus reaches in one of his tentacles to get you.'
'You brute! aren't things bad enough?' murmured Sally.
'No, honestly—however doubtful the future looks it will be a better bet once we're out of this and up on the wharf.'
The Doctor nodded. 'The Herr Kapitan speaks sense Frau-lein and although these people are primitive beyond belief they may prove hospitable. One thing is certain—they will be more frightened of us than we of them.'
Sally looked at Camilla, who nodded faintly. 'All right,' she said, 'do as you wish,' and so the matter was agreed.
A hasty meal was made, to keep up their strength, of half the picnic lunch. The remaining torches were distributed and ev
ery tool or item which might possibly be of use later, apportioned out amongst them.
The McKay still had the automatic; four bullets remained in it and he reloaded to capacity from Bozo's only spare clip, so that he had eight in the magazine and one in the chamber with a last reload of a further three in his pocket.
He picked up a three-foot steel bar with a big joint at its ■2nd from the dump at the back of the sphere as an additional weapon. The others, including the girls, armed themselves with suitable pieces of the machinery which had been
removed from the bottom of the sphere in such desperate
haste.
'Ready?' asked the McKay.
A murmur of assent went up.
'All right then,' he grinned for the first time since he had left the ship; 'it's just on midnight and a very appropriate hour to step ashore in an unknown land like this. Come on, help me through the hole some of you.'
Legs foremost they pushed him through and his feet splashed into the shallow water. Immediately he was standing upright they passed through his pistol, torch and steel bar. He thrust the latter through his braces like an awkward blunt sword, and began at once to take closer stock of his surroundings.
The torch showed him that they were in a lofty cavern— the roof was just visible. The wall opposite the quay reached sheer up to it—the extremities on either hand he could not see; he turned the beam on the quay.
It was of solid, well-built, even masonry and, above it, he saw at once that, whether they were blind or not, some sense had warned the half-men that he had left the sphere. Every one of the grey-white mob had risen and was staring at him with pale, blank, apparently sightless eyes.
'Hello there!' he called, waving the hand that held the torch in greeting, and holding his pistol ready with the other.
The response was instantaneous. Countless shrill voices broke into piercing cries, a thousand arms lifted—and a thousand stones were hurled in the direction of the sphere.
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