Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

Slinger congratulated himself upon his choice of Captain, for when he had made his arrangements with the Doctor in

Paris he had insisted on selecting his own man for the job with power to pick his officers and crew. Evidently Captain Ardow meant to earn the very considerable sum he had been promised for his complaisance. He was taking no chances that any of his people should warn Camilla that something queer was afoot or cause trouble at the last moment through having formed a pleasant association with any member of her party during the trip.

For a few moments they all stood in the stern of the ship staring at the great spherical steel bathysphere with its row of small round protruding windows like flat eyes on short thick stalks.

'I should have thought that the glass in those portholes would have been liable to burst, however thick they are, under the immense pressure they will have to sustain at any considerable depth,' remarked Nicky.

'They are not glass but fused quartz,' replied Captain Ardow.

'How can you see through quartz?' enquired Camilla, 'the bits I've seen in museums are all misty even when it's the kind that's supposed to be lumps of crystal.'

'This is fused,' Count Axel informed with his quiet smile. 'Not only is it far stronger than ordinary plate glass but infinitely clearer. So clear in fact that when you look through it things appear to be nearer than they are.'

'That's fair enough,' agreed Nicky, 'and I don't doubt we'll see the ocean bottom plenty but we can't get outside that thing once we've been screwed into it so what I don't get is how we're to pick up the gold when we find it.'

'There are dredges underneath the sphere which can be operated by electricity from inside it,' Captain Ardow told him. 'You cannot perceive them now for they are under water, but they are like the claws and pincers of a great crab.'

Prince Vladimir Renescu stood by, a faintly supercilious smile on his firm lips. The arguments of Count Axel and the Doctor for the existence of Atlantis had passed right over his head. He still regarded the whole trip only as a heaven sent opportunity to get Camilla on her own. That afternoon he succeeded.

Count Axel Fersan, who was employing his very considerable brain to counter the physical attractions of his younger rivals, had decided to allow them to expend their powder and shot, since he was reasonably certain that Camilla enjoyed playing with all three of her suitors so much that she would not get engaged to any of them before the voyage was nearly at an end.

Little as he had in common with Nicky therefore, he buttonholed him after lunch in order to give the Roumanian his chance. Prince Vladimir took it and rushed Camilla off to have another look at the bathysphere since that was at the secluded end of the ship.

No sooner had they reached the stern than he shot one contemptuous glance at the big ball and said: 'So we do divings in that round iron house eh? Wait here and we will talk of pleasant things far more.'

Then he disappeared among the masses of machinery, to return a few moments later, red faced and breathless from his haste and the fear that one of the others might find Camilla on her own, with a pile of cushions and rugs. These he spread carefully on a few feet of open deck and with a smiling bow invited her to be seated.

Camilla was an artist at reclining gracefully and now she disposed her delicious limbs to their utmost advantage on the couch he had prepared; but her charming pose was rudely disturbed a second later for, with amazing speed and dexterity, he suddenly snatched at both her shoes and pulled them from her feet.

'Vladimir!' she exclaimed sharply.

He only laughed and his great deep healthy booming merriment drowned the hissing of the waters as they foamed from the screws, beneath the bathysphere, out into the white wake of the ship.

'You escape me not at all—now or hereafter,' he declared. 'Prisoner most precious 1 have you mine.'

'Vladimir don't be stupid,' she smiled. 'Give me back my shoes.'

He shook his dark curly head. 'Not so, while I have you are compelled here to repose. Also your feet so small are godlike to behold. I could eat them for pleasure,' then suiting the action to the idea he took one in his great fist, and carrying it up to his mouth, bit her big toe.

'Vladimir!—you idiot! Stop I say!' Camilla insisted, but she felt a sudden thrill run through her as, releasing her foot, his white teeth flashed in a quick smile, and he declared:

'This voyage I shall persuade you of myself and we will make happiness together. When we are so put, i wiil bite you all over.'

'We are not going to be "so put". You'd better understand that, Prince,' she said a little nervously. 'I don't approve of that sort of thing unless people are married.'

'But you have me misunderstood,' he protested, and his black velvet eyes stared into her with sudden seriousness. 'As my wife I will bite you all over—not before. Think upon it—all the happiness we will make morning, noon and by night.'

'Is that another proposal of marriage?'

'Why yes. I am to you loving with desperateness. Take then my homage heartfelt so deep. The rank which should be by right with your so marvellous beauty 1 delight to give. Think of it. Prince Vladimir Renescu and his Princess. No couple so handsome would be in Europe. Young marrieds, as you say, very rich, very chic—everywhere most welcome. Also any man who speaks that you are not the most beautiful woman in the world—I strangle with these two fists.' He held out his leg of mutton paws.

Camilla smiled and shook her head. 'I can't decide just yet. Nicky and Count Axel both want me to marry them too.'

He shrugged his vast shoulders. 'Count Axel is a man of rank but not enough—also he is old. He must be fifty at the smallest, and he could not make happiness as I, who have no fatigues—ever. As for Nicky—no. You could not. He is one indivisible cad. Presently I kick him in his so colourful pants.'

'You will do no such thing. You'd find Nicky a dear if you tried to understand him.'

'For me that can never be. I am a Prince and he is a cad,' declared the Roumanian with simple logic.

You are a snob,' smiled Camilla lazily, 'but nevertheless I like you Vladimir—awfully.'

'You like me eh!' His black eyes sparkled as he bent above her. 'In that case—by crikey—we will kiss.' And they spent the remainder of the afternoon that way.

After tea Vladimir tried to follow up his advantage but

Camilla refused to be drawn away from the forward deck.

Slinger had organised a deck-tennis tournament and, in the intervals between sets, those who were not playing either watched the others or the waves peacefully dissolving one into another on the limitless expanse of ocean.

Despite the sea's apparent emptiness there was always something of interest to observe. A school of round backed porpoises leaping and diving as they ploughed their way to the south-eastward across the bows of the ship; a huge solitary sea turtle, floating idly in the waves, far from his home upon the Moroccan shore; the fate of a bucket of refuse that one of the cooks shot without warning from the galley below, and the graceful swoop of the screaming gulls from the mast-head as they dived to secure the floating crusts. Cocktail time came and went, then the party dispersed to change for dinner. The lazy hours of the day had drifted pleasantly by as they are apt to do in the fair weather upon a ship at sea.

Dinner was cheerful but uneventful and after the meal Count Axel, pursuing his subtle policy of letting his rivals do their worst, suggested bridge. He knew that neither Camilla nor Nicky cared for the game whereas Vladimir not only prided himself upon playing a fine hand but being a born gambler in addition could not resist the lure of a pack of cards.