Arthur Doyle - The Maracot Deep

Week glided into week in our new life. It had become a very pleasant one, and we were slowly picking up enough of this long-forgotten tongue to enable us to converse a little with our companions. There were endless subjects both for study and for amusement in the Refuge, and already Maracot has mastered so much of the old chemistry that he declares that he can revolutionize all worldly ideas if he can only transmit his knowledge. Among other things they have learned to split the atom, and though the energy released is less than our scientists had anticipated, it is still sufficient to supply them with a great reservoir of power. Their acquaintance with the power and nature of the ether is also far ahead of ours, and indeed that strange translation of thought into pictures, by which we had told them our story and they theirs, was due to an etheric impression translated back into terms of matter.

And yet, in spite of their knowledge, there were points connected with modern scientific developments which had been overlooked by their ancestors.

It was left to Scanlan to demonstrate the fact. For weeks he was in a state of suppressed excitement, bursting with some great secret, and chuckling continually at his own thoughts. We only saw him occasionally during this time, for he was extremely busy and his one friend and confidant was a fat and jovial Atlantean named Berbrix, who was in charge of some of the machinery. Scanlan and Berbrix, though their intercourse was carried on chiefly by signs and mutual back-slapping, had become very close friends, and were now continually closeted together. One evening Scanlan came in radiant.

“Look here, Doc,” he said to Maracot, “I’ve a dope of my own that I want to hand to these folk. They’ve shown us a thing or two and I figure that it is up to us to return it. What’s the matter with calling them together tomorrow night for a show?”

“Jazz or the Charleston?” I asked.

“Charleston nothing. Wait till you see it. Man, it’s the greatest stunt — but there, I won’t say a word more. Just this, Bo. I won’t let you down, for I’ve got the goods, and I mean to deliver them.”

Accordingly, the community were assembled next evening in the familiar hall. Scanlan and Berbrix were on the platform, beaming with pride. One or other of them touched a button, and then — well, to use Scanlan’s own language, “I hand it to him, for he did surprise us some!”

“2L.O. calling,” cried a clear voice. “London calling the British Isles. Weather forecast.” Then followed the usual sentence about depressions and anticyclones. “First News Bulletin. His Majesty the King this morning opened the new wing of the Children’s Hospital in Hammersmith — ” and so on and on, in the familiar strain. For the first time we were back in a workaday England once more, plodding bravely through its daily task, with its stout back bowed under its war debts. Then we heard the foreign news, the sporting news. The old world was droning on the same as ever. Our friends the Atlanteans listened in amazement, but without comprehension. When, however, as the first item after the news, the Guards” band struck up the march from Lohengrin a positive shout of delight broke from the people, and it was funny to see them rush upon the platform, and turn over the curtains, and look behind the screens to find the source of the music. Yes, we have left our mark for ever upon the submarine civilization.

“No, sir,” said Scanlan, afterwards. “I could not make an issuing station. They have not the material, and I have not the brains. But down at home I rigged a two-valve set of my own with the aerial beside the clothes line in the yard, and I learned to handle it, and to pick up any station in the States. It seemed to me funny if, with all this electricity to hand, and with their glasswork ahead of ours, we couldn’t vamp up something that would catch an ether wave, and a wave would sure travel through water just as easy as through air. Old Berbrix nearly threw a fit when we got the first call, but he is wise to it now, and I guess it’s a permanent institution.”

Among the discoveries of the Atlantean chemists is a gas which is nine times lighter than hydrogen and which Maracot has named levigen. It was his experiments with this which gave us the idea of sending glass balls with information as to our fate to the surface of the ocean.

“I have made Manda understand the idea,” said he. “He has given orders to the silica workers, and in a day or two the globes will be ready.”

“But how can we get our news inside?” I asked.

“There is a small aperture left through which the gas is inserted. Into this we can push the papers. Then these skilful workers can seal up the hole. I am assured that when we release them they will shoot up to the surface.”

“And bob about unseen for a year.”

“That might be. But the ball would reflect the sun’s rays. It would surely attract attention. We were on the line of shipping between Europe and South America. I see no reason why, if we send several, one at least may not be found.”

And this, my dear Talbot, or you others who read this narrative, is how it comes into your hands. But a far more fateful scheme may lie behind it. The idea came from the fertile brain of the American mechanic.

“Say friends,” said he, as we sat alone in our chamber, “it’s dandy down here, and the drink is good and the eats are good, and I’ve met a wren that makes anything in Philadelphia look like two cents, but all the same there are times when I want to feel that I might see God’s own country once more.”

“We may all feel that way,” said I, “but I don’t see how you can hope to make it.”

“Look it here, Bo! If these balls of gas could carry up our message, maybe they could carry us up also. Don’t think I’m joshing, for I’ve figured it out to. rights. We will suppose we put three or four of them together so as to get a good lift. See? Then we have our vitrine bells on and harness ourselves on to the balls. When the bell rings we cut loose and up we go. What is going to stop us between here and the surface?”

“A shark, maybe.”

“Blah! Sharks nothing! We would streak past any shark so’s he’d hardly know we was there. He’d think we was three flashes of light and we’d get such a lick on that we’d shoot fifty feet up in the air at the other end. I tell you the goof that sees us come up is going to say his prayers over it.”

“But suppose it is possible, what will happen afterwards!”

“For Pete’s sake, leave afterwards out of it! Let us chance our luck, or we are here for keeps. It’s me for cutting loose and having a dash at it.”

“I certainly greatly desire to return to the world, if only to lay our results before the learned societies,” said Maracot. “It is only my personal influence which can make them realize the fund of new knowledge which I have acquired. I should be quite in favour of any such attempt as Scanlan has indicated.”

There were good reasons, as I will tell later, which made me the least eager of the three.

“It would be perfect madness as you propose it. Unless we had someone expecting us on the surface we should infallibly drift about and perish from hunger and thirst.”

“Shucks, man, how could we have someone expecting us?”

“Perhaps even that could be managed,” said Maracot. “We can give within a mile or two the exact latitude and longitude of our position.”

“And they would let down a ladder,” said I, with some bitterness.

“Ladder nothing! The boss is right. See here, Mr. Headley, you put in that letter that you are going to send the universe — my! don’t I see the scare lines in the journals! — that we are at 27 North Latitude and 28.14 West Longitude, or whatever other figure is the right one, Got that? Then you say that three of the most important folk in history, the great man of Science, Maracot, and the rising-star bug-collector, Headley, and Bob Scanlan, a peach of a mechanic and the pride of Merribank’s; are all yellin” and whoopin” for help from the bottom of the sea. Follow my idea?”