Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

'Come on now, Camilla,' Nicky urged. 'What's all this business about getting to the bottom of the Atlantic?'

The McKay appeared at that moment on his way down to the garden and Camilla called to him. 'Come and join us, Captain, you know all about the sea. What are the chances of getting to the bottom of it?'

'Remarkable few if you happen to be in the British Navy —thank God!' he replied drily as he pulled up a chair. 'I've managed to avoid it for twenty-eight years.'

'Oh, stop this fooling,' cut in Nicky impatiently. 'Didn't the little German say there was a whole heap of gold to be got? Let's hear about it then.'

The Roumanian's black eyes flashed with an antagonism that he did not attempt to conceal. .'I have heard a rumour that you are bankrupt stock, but thought that you seek an easier way than a gamble with life to make whole your balances.'

Nicky went scarlet. 'See here!' he began but Count Axel's gentle laughter mocked him into a furious silence.

The Count was older than the other two. Slim, elegant, of middle height, he had neither the Roumanian's military swagger or the Greek-god features which had made Nicky's profile world famous, but he possessed the quiet distinction which scholarship lends to nobility. His face was long, his nose a little pointed, his eyes a quick intelligent hazel. His lightish brown hair was already thinning on his delicately moulded skull.

'Now children,' Camilla held up her hand to quiet his impish laughter. 'Be good, and Rene shall tell you all the Herr Doktor said at lunch of what he plans to do.'

Slinger hunched himself forward, gave a twirl to the butt of his cigar, and began in a high reedy voice: 'I didn't understand half the scientific stuff he talked, but this is how I get it.

'Thousands of years ago there was land right in the middle of the North Atlantic—an island as big as France and Germany put together. There were chains of small islands too, one running from it down to Brazil and the other across to Portugal. According to the Professor that's the only way so many plants and animals that are common to both continents could have got across the ocean.'

'How about their migrating round the Arctic?' Nicky cut in sceptically.

Count Axel shook his head. Like the majority of educated Scandinavians he spoke perfect English. 'Many of the plants which are known to have existed independently in both hemispheres, such as the banana palm for example, could never have lived north of the temperate zone.'

'Anyhow,' Slinger went on, 'the Herr Doktor postulates that this island was the original Garden of Eden as far as the White Races go. Fertile, fine climate, about like this in its southern part and, above all, isolated for thousands of years by its sea barriers on either side—so completely protected from invasion. That enabled its inhabitants gradually to develop in peace and security until they achieved a wonderful civilisation, the remnants of which are the basis of all the other cultures which have come down to us.'

'That's interesting enough as a theory,' agreed the McKay.

'The Doctor maintains that he can prove it a hundred times over by similarities between the root language of the Central-American Indians and various Mediterranean peoples; by the fact that they had the same hierarchy of Gods, the same system of astrology, the same methods ofagriculture, and the same style ofarchitecture. It seems that the Mexicans once went in for Pyramid building just like the Egyptians.'

'That is so,' Count Axel's thin mouth twitched at the corners and his rather sad face was lit by a quick smile. 'Some of the pyramids built by the Aztecs in Mexico are very large and exactly similar to the early efforts in the valley of the Nile, although they got no further than the step pyramids which the Egyptians achieved as early as their Fourth Dynasty.'

'You seem to know quite a lot about it already, Count,' Slinger remarked.

'The rise of ancient civilisations has always interested me, and many people believe that they all owe their origin to trading colonies which were established by the Atlanteans before their island was submerged in some stupendous upheaval.'

Slinger shook his bald pate. 'The Herr Doktor was arguing that if that were the case those colonies would have carried on where the Atlanteans left off and reached a similar high plane within a few generations. His theory is that the Atlanteans held no communication with the outside world at all and that in one frightful day and night of earthquakes the whole continent went down. It must have been a catastrophe utterly unparalleled in the history of the world, but out of the several million people who probably inhabited the island it's likely that some who were in boats and so on would have been saved and washed ashore alive here and there in the huge tidal waves. A few reached Egypt and started that maybe: another lot struck northern Palestine and got going in Chaldea; a single man perhaps fetched up on the coast of Mexico and another in Brazil. If the Doctor's right that would explain why the new centres took so long to develop—only a little of the original knowledge would have survived with each man or group you see. Just as today, not one of us could carry a thousandth part of modern scientific knowledge and culture with us if we were suddenly dumped down among a barbarous people.'

'I've often wondered just how much we could do if half a dozen people like us were washed up on a desert island,' said Sally.

'It's an interesting speculation,' agreed Slinger, 'but to get 16

back—the Doctor thinks that some of these folk who reached Cornwall and Brittany were simple fishermen who could do little more than carry their great religion of sun worship to the natives they found, just as any of us would know enough of Christianity to preach it, however ignorant we might be about electricity and machines. He holds that they founded the Druid's cult, whereas others, the batch that got to Egypt for example, had educated people amongst them, which would account for the Egyptians worshipping the sun god Ra, but in a more sophisticated way, and corning on with regard to the amenities of life more than all the rest.'

Count Axel nodded. 'That theory fits in very well with the story of the Flood. In addition to the account of it in our scriptures, the Celts, the Babylonians and all the tribes of Central American Indians preserved legends of it too. I do not think anyone can doubt that the Deluge was an actual historical occurrence and a catastrophe of such tremendous magnitude would naturally be embodied in the race memories of all the people who knew of it. The Herr Doktor's idea of separate groups surviving is supported too by the fact that all legends of the Flood, although agreeing in their main particulars, differ in their account as to how their central figures were saved. Some, like Noah, had arks, others took refuge in caves on high mountains, others again were washed ashore dinging to great trees, and so on. The most curious thing of all is that Flood legends are very strong among the races of the West Indies and Mediterranean basin, vague if you go further north or south, and practically non-existent if you investigate the folk-lore of the Pacific Islands, China, Australia, Malaya and Japan. That points so very definitely to the calamity having occurred in the North Atlantic about where the Azores are now.'

Slinger stood up. 'I see you know more of this than I do Count, so I'll leave you to entertain the party while I find Doctor Tisch. He must have gotten through his mail by now.'

'Let's cut out the cackle and come to the gold,' Nicky suggested as Slinger left them.

'By all means.' Count Axel smiled lazily beneath half lowered lids. 'The case for the actual existence of Atlantis before the Deluge rests principally, for its historic foundation, on certain passages in Plato's Critias and Timosus. According to these a scholarly Greek named Solon visited Egypt about 450 b.c. and a learned Priest of Sais gave him an account of the marvellous island. Atlantis, according to the ancient tradition was preserved in the memory of the Egyptians as the place where early mankind dwelt for many ages in peace and happiness. It was the cradle of all civilisation and, when submerged some nine thousand years before Solon's time, inhabited by a powerful, wealthy, and cultured people.