K Jeter - Morlock Night

With an expression of bewilderment and frantic movements, I made a great show of expressing an inability to stem the flood. I beat futilely upon the ranks of controls, wrung my hands piteously and tore at my hair, all while the dark water crept steadily upwards. At last the Morlocks comprehended the message I was pantomiming. Most of my adjustments to the controls had been hidden from them by my body, so they had no idea of what particular lever or wheel was responsible for the incoming water.

If my captors had been garrulous before, they were positively babbling now. As the water rose over our shins the whole troop of them engaged in a vocal uproar like the baying of panic-stricken animals. At some point in the general bedlam the consensus was apparently reached among them to abandon the submarine rather than to go down with it. With hurried rushing back and forth, colliding with each other, shouting dreadful gibberish imprecations at each knocking of heads as they splashed backwards into the rising water they sought to implement their plan of escape.

From some locker in the rear of the submarine a pair of small collapsible boats and a number of leather vests with large, balloon-like air bladders sewn into them were produced. The Morlocks scrambled for the latter, two or more often tugging at one vest until one managed to wrest it from his fellows, though at last all the brutes had managed to don them.

The collapsible boats were opened and set up, and rushed by all hands toward the ladder that led to an overhead hatchway. All the Morlocks scrabbled to be nearest the boats, as there was quite obviously not enough spaces in them for all, and those left over would have to take their chances on bobbing in the underground ocean supported solely by their air-filled vests. After much futile hoisting, straining, and dropping back into the water, it was discovered that the boats were too large when opened up to go through the hatchway. With the boats folded back into their original shape they tried again. This time they succeeded in pushing them up through the exit, and clambered after as packed together as a swarm of bees. I shouted after the last ones and rattled the chain connected to the banks of the submarine's controls. Through piteous gestures and sounds I implored them to release me. The last pair of Morlocks laughed scornfully at me and climbed after their fellows, leaving me to a death by drowning. Most likely they felt I deserved it due to my poor piloting of the submarine.

As soon as they had all vanished from the chamber, I stepped away from the controls and the corpse that the Morlocks had mistakenly re-shackled to the apparatus. For a second I let my expression dissolve into a frankly gloating smile of self-approval.

Thus far my hastily conceived plan had worked better than I could have hoped. Above my head, through the open hatchway, I could hear the Morlocks launching their two little boats into the underground ocean, the clamour of their struggle to gain places in the boats, and the splashing about of those who had already chosen or been forced to land in the water itself. I had been left sole master of the submarine. Though partially flooded, it remained buoyant enough to remain floating. Surely I could find means of remedying enough of its malfunctions in order for it to convey me to some safe landing. What I would do from that point on I left for the future and its chances to decide. I turned back to the controls in order to halt the inflowing water. Sharp, percussive noises that I couldn't quite identify sounded from outside the vessel, but I had no time to puzzle over them.

The levers were beyond my power to move. I tugged in growing desperation at them, losing my footing in the now waist-high water and hampered by the hobbled corpse washing against me in a grisly manner, but the controls remained stuck in their new positions. Either the controls or the mechanisms they operated had been frozen in place by the water pouring into the submarine.

My mind racing like a rat caught in a rain barrel, I saw that I too would have to follow the Morlocks and abandon the vessel. Perhaps I could yet swim to safety. I slogged through the chill, fetid water that was flooding the chamber and was halfway up the ladder that led to the open hatchway when I realised that the cloth-wrapped Excalibur was still somewhere in the engine room where I had originally been bound. If the precious weapon sank with the submarine to the well-nigh bottomless depths of this dark ocean, then all would be lost. There would be no point in my even escaping with my life, except to share in my fellow Mankind's eventual doom.

I lowered myself back into the water and halfswam through it toward the opening of the corridor that ran back to the engine room. The current pressing against my chest made my progress maddeningly slow. I was only a matter of several yards down the passageway when the submarine's interior went pitch dark, and the vessel itself began to tilt. The back section, made heavier by the weight of the engine, was pulling the submarine into a vertical position as it sank. How would I manage to find Excalibur in an unlit and submerged space filled with strange machinery? By now the brass control rods were close enough overhead for me to use in pulling myself down the corridor. Every panicking nerve in my body pulled me the other way, back toward air and light. I felt the passage tighten about me as I descended into its stifling depths.

The way seemed endless and I began to doubt my memory of the passage's length. The water at last reached the top of the downward sloping space, and I was forced to take a deep breath and pull myself under with one hand on the brass rods. With my other hand I found the top of the engine room's doorway a yard or so farther along the submerged corridor. I let go of the reds and swam down into the lightless chamber.

The water fought against my every motion as I fumbled about blindly in it. My lungs were already aching when my hands at last touched upon the pole to which I had first found myself tied. I drew myself along its length to the now sharply tilting floor and felt about for the cloth bundle that contained Excalibur. I found nothing – the sword had probably slid to the deepest part of the room.

The blood was roaring in my ears by this time and my lungs hammered with every pulse for air. A deeper blackness than the one surrounding me was welling up behind my eyes. I could search for the sword no longer. Pushing myself away from the floor, I swam toward the room's doorway.

The nightmare of cold and suffocation had no end – I had lost the doorway. An infinity of dark water without escape stretched in all directions from my blindly groping hands. Like a drowned cat I floated upwards, will-less and limp.

My face broke into air and hungrily, automatically, my burning lungs drew it in. Consciousness rose from the near corpse of my brain and I lifted my hand to discover the nature of this miracle. Apparently a pocket of air had been caught in one of the room's corners and I had drifted into it.

I filled my lungs several times over and dived back under the water. This time I swam as far as I could, seeking out the room's lowest point. Wedged between a corner of the engine and a bulkhead I found the bundle and felt Excalibur's length inside of it. With the replenished air starting to burn in my lungs, I kicked myself up through the water and by God's grace found the doorway immediately to hand. An agonizingly long way through the corridor, I at last broke through to the not yet submerged portion of the submarine. The foul air of the sewers that I breathed in seemed to me like the freshest wind that had ever blown.

The overpowering fear of drowning was gone, but I still had to escape the sinking vessel itself. I clutched Excalibur to my chest and swam to the side of the unlit space I was in. I fumbled my way along the bulkhead until I came to a metal ladder. Praying that it led to an exit, I clambered up.