Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

As the bathysphere descended a group of men under the second officer had been paying out the thick rubber hose containing the triple telephone and lighting wires which entered the top of the sphere through the stuffing box. Now, this was attached to the cable by a rope tie in order that it should not break under the strain of its own weight. Captain Ardow gave another order and the bathysphere was let down a further 200 feet.

Another tie was fixed attaching the communication hose again to the cable. Both were paid out once more and so the business proceeded, with a halt at every 200 feet for fresh ties to be attached, until the empty bathysphere hung 2,000 feet beneath the ship.

The Doctor then gave orders for it to be hauled up again, and the reverse process was followed. As the cable wound in on the drums the communication hose was coiled down by hand, the machinery stopping every two minutes to enable the second officer to remove the ties which attached the hose to the cable.

At last, eighty-three minutes after the bathysphere had sunk from view, it reappeared again and now the ticklish task of getting it back on its runners was undertaken. A boat having been lowered guy ropes were attached to ringbolts in the sphere's surface, the winches were brought into play and the guy ropes tightened until the great steel ball had been brought into correct alignment. The crane clanked, the bathysphere lifted a fraction, and slid gently back into its original position.

The whole operation had occupied an hour and fifty minutes so it was now nearly one o'clock but Camilla feared that if she put off her dive until after lunch she would lose her courage and told the Doctor that, if all was well, she was quite prepared to go down.

A ladder was lowered to the special platform which supported by the steel runners of the bathysphere, filled the gap between it and the ship. The Doctor and four of the crew descended to it.

For ten minutes they worked with great wrenches on the bolts that sealed the circular door in the side of the sphere. At last they got it off and Doctor Tisch, having made a careful examination of the interior reported that everything was perfectly satisfactory.

Sally kissed Camilla impulsively and cried: 'Oh do be careful darling! Are you sure you wouldn't like me to come with you.'

Camilla bit her lower lip nervously, but shook her head.

'No dear,' she said. 'I promised to make the first trip alone with the Doctor and Count Axel—so here goes.'

The Count handed her down on to the platform and helped her in the awkward business of scrambling through the small round opening in the sphere, then he turned, waved to the others and followed her inside.

At first there seemed hardly room to turn round in the strange spherical chamber in which they found themselves and except in its centre, it was impossible to stand upright. The concave walls positively bristled with instruments, cylinders, gauges, wires, and the searchlight apparatus occupied a good portion of the headroom to their right. However, it was actually constructed to hold eight people and climbing over the backs of the canvas chairs which were screwed to the wooden floor they settled themselves opposite the row of fused quartz portholes.

The Doctor climbed in after them and then his telephonist, Oscar, a pale pimply young man whom they had not seen before. A derrick lifted the solid steel door from the platform and swung it into place, the crew pushed it home over the ring of bolts that held it in position, and then began to screw it down.

Oscar squatted on a stool near the door and put his instruments over his head, while the Doctor wriggled into another of the canvas chairs from which he could control the searchlight. Suddenly there was a thunderous, ear-splitting crash.

Camilla and Axel both ducked but the Doctor shouted to them. 'Do not be alarmed! It is only the crew who hammer home the bolts, and stuffed his fingers in his ears.

They followed his example but it was impossible to shut out the din and for the next five minutes the sphere reverberated as though giant projectiles were constantly being hurled against it. Then the noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun and gave place to an utter eerie silence.

'I'm frightened,' said Camilla breathlessly.

Count Axel took her arm and pressed it. 'No you're not,' he told her confidently. 'You are just missing the sound of the waves—that's all.'

'All right, I'm not then,' she smiled faintly but clung tightly to his arm.

The telephonist was speaking to his opposite number on 70

the deck. The Doctor opened up his trays of Calcium chloride for absorbing excessive moisture, and Soda lime for removing the poisonous Carbon dioxide from the used air. Then he turned on the precious life giving oxygen, and the circulator fan. The telephonist spoke again, and the bathysphere began to move.

Up on the deck the McKay leaned over the rail with Sally beside him. 'By Jove,' he murmured, 'I've often thought Camilla wanted her bottom smacking, but I'll give it to her that she's a darn brave kid. I wouldn't go down in that thing for a thousand pounds.'

As he spoke the waters closed over the bathysphere and it began its journey to those grim regions where strange life dwells in perpetual night.

Dive Number One

Camilla stared nervously out of one of the portholes. As the bathysphere sank below the waterline bubbles of air obscured her view and she could see nothing for a moment, then the chamber dimmed to a gentle green and she found herself facing a barnacle encrusted surface which had long streamers of greeny-yellow weed waving gracefully from it —the hull of the ship.

They seemed so near that she started back, fearing that they were going to crash against it, but Count Axel gave her hand another reassuring squeeze. He knew that, fused quartz being the clearest and most transparent material in the world, distances are apt to be deceptive when judged through it, and that the streamers of golden weed which appeared near enough to touch by stretching out a hand were actually fifteen to twenty feet away at the least. Another moment and the hull had slipped from view, their last visible link with the upper world was gone.

Almost at once the water took on a bluish tinge but the interior of the bathysphere remained light and bright. A thousand little motes drifted past the windows as they sank —the insects of the sea. Then a shoal of aurelia jellyfish drifted by pulsing gracefully along as they passed their level and, as they were halted for the first tie—attaching the communication hose to the table—to be fixed, they saw their first fish.

'Oh look,' exclaimed Camilla, 'aren't they lovely!' It was only small fry but the iridescent light upon their scales made them seem like living jewels.

The telephonist muttered, the sphere descended again. All trace of red and orange in the light had disappeared, the yellow tinge was now scarcely perceptible and instead they had been replaced with a more brilliant blue. A dozen prawns came swimming by graceful, silver, fairy like, and then three fishes in a row. The bathysphere stopped and the Doctor murmured: 'We are now at 400 feet. Deeper than any submarine now made can go.'

A long string of siphonophores making a pattern like the most delicate lace slipped past. Then came another fish, a small fat absurd looking puffer, who peered with round expressionless eyes at them through the window, but he flashed away with a swift thrust of his tail as a ghostly pilot fish, pure white with black upright bands, came into view. As the sphere moved on its downward journey two big silvery bronze eels came swimming by and now Camilla sat entranced. All sense of fear had left her under the fascination of this marvellous ever changing spectacle. The sight of all this teeming life beneath the ocean with its myriad colours and thousand different forms held her spellbound as she gazed.