Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

As they were passing 2,500 feet a queer lightless brute, the colour of dead, water-soaked flesh, toothless and with high vertical fins on its hinder part but only a round knob for a tail, came into view.

'This inhabitant of deep seas Dr. William Beebe has named the Palid Sailfin,' announced Doctor Tisch.

At 2,800 feet a monster passed. Twenty-five feet in length at least, oval in shape, monochrome in colour, and lacking both eyes and fins, a strange beast, unnamed, unknown to science. Some species of whale perhaps since nature has provided the whale with the amazing faculty of changing the chemical consistency of its blood which enables it to resist the gigantic pressures of great depths and, although a mammal, become capable, as has been proved, of diving a distance of a mile below the surface.

A moment later the sphere was halted for its next tie and the searchlight came to rest on an unbelievably gorgeous creature. It was an almost round fish with high continuous vertical fins, a big eye and a medium mouth. Its skin was brownish but along the sides of the body ran five fantastically beautiful lines of light, one equatorial and the others curved two above and two below. Each line was composed of a series of large, pale yellow lights and every one of these was surrounded by a circle of very small but intensely purple photophores. It turned and showed a narrow profile like a turbot, then swam away.

'Schon—schori,' murmured the Doctor. 'That beauty Doctor Beebe has named the Fivelined Constellation Fish.'

At 3,200 feet the path cut by the searchlight had changed again. The turquoise cap had come right down to the very windows of the sphere yet they could still see distinctly for a considerable distance by its bright blue light. Along each side of the sharply marked beam appeared a broad border of rich velvety dark blue and outside this an indescribable blackness, which could almost be felt, made straining eyes as useless as total blindness.

'Lower than this no human has ever been,' Doctor Tisch announced with satisfaction yet just a touch of awe. •William Beebe has only reached 3,028 feet. He is the pioneer who has made this journey possible for us and others who will come after. Later, perhaps, men will gather from the ocean beds fortunes of great size. Cortez brought home to Spain the wealth of Mexico. Pizzaro also brought back for his country the riches of Peru, but these names are not to us as the name of Christopher Columbus who was the first discoverer of the New World. When many years have gone the name of William Beebe will receive much honour and retain it for such time as our civilisation shall last. He also has opened up a New World for mankind. The pressure here is more than half a ton on each square inch of bathysphere but our instruments show all is as it should be. Where Beebe led we have follow satisfactorily—now we ourselves pass on. Oscar we are ready to go lower again.'

The little telephonist muttered into his mouthpiece. The bathysphere sank further into the depths.

Suddenly the Prince leaned forward in his seat behind Camilla and kissed her on the curve of the neck.

'Vladimir!' she exclaimed with a start.

He chuckled. 'Am I Columbus—no. Am I Beebe—no, but I am the first to make kissings with the so beautiful lady I love at such deeps under sea.'

Camilla preened herself a little. 'You are a dear,' she murmured, 'but you shouldn't you know. Just look at those marvellous lights.

Irregular formations of every hue were playing in the dark areas outside the beam and Doctor Tisch cut it off. For a further 800 feet they remained in the tense black darkness watching the fascinating display which now lit the windows. Angler fish came and went each with one to five lanterns bobbing from long rod-like fins upon their heads and sides. Stylophthalmas passed with luminous eyes on stalks one third as long as their entire bodies. Once Sally started back with a little cry of fright as some unknown organism collided with the port through which she was watching and burst like a firework into a thousand sparks, but immediately afterwards her entire attention was distracted by a single large dull green light as big as a cricket ball which went slowly past.

At 4,000 feet the Doctor switched on the light again and they saw their first great octopus, a parrot beaked creature with huge unwinking eyes and waving tentacles more than twenty feet in length. Instantly Tisch snapped out the light.

'He will not see us without lights,' he remarked with unnatural calm. 'Specimens of such size might be a danger if they believe our sphere to be some dead organism.'

For a moment Count Axel's vivid imagination conjured up the picture of a giant octopus wrapping its tentacles round the bathysphere and, by its added weight making it impossible for the machinery of the crane ever to draw them up again, but second thought reassured him. When the creature found the steel ball too solid for its beak and quite inedible it would drop off and he knew from conversations with the Doctor that the cable could withstand twenty times the bathysphere's submerged weight. Nothing but the terrific jerk of flinging the crane into reverse when the sphere was running out at full speed, which it was never allowed to do, could possibly snap it, so they were safe enough unless attacked by some monster of undreamed of size.

When they had slipped down another few hundred feet the light was put on once more and nothing more terrifying appeared than a large eel with a couple of its slim transparent ghost-like larvae. Then at 4,800 feet the extremity of the light beam seemed to dim and they realised with asudden tightening of their muscles that some gigantic fish was passing. Unlit, the colour of dead water-soaked flesh, like the Palid Sailfin it glided by, its shape unguessed since the searchlight showed no more of it than a rapid glimpse of its side, which 1appeared like the hull of some great battleship.

It seemed a Brontosaurus of the deep and the Doctor craned forward eagerly to watch it but his hands began to tremble with even greater excitement as he saw what followed in its wake. A school of strange roundheaded fishes with forefins which curved outward like clutching hands. They swam with malevolent carnivorous rapidity after the monster fish evidently in chase. There was something strangely horrifying in the sight of those sinister creatures never before looked upon by man, hunting their prey in a world of utter, forever unbroken silence, through the eternal night of the great deep.

It made the humans in the bathysphere realise more than anything else had done how completely cut off they were from that gay world of flowers and trees and sunshine thousands of feet above. They were staggered at their own temerity and momentarily appalled at the thought that they had dared to invade this vast kingdom of the unknown, far greater than all the land surfaces of the earth together, with no more promise of security than the single thin thread of t.f.a.—e 129 cable, stretching now to nearly a mile in length, from which they dangled.

Their thoughts were so occupied that they hardly noticed their descent of the last fifty fathoms. A sudden unexpected jar caused them to start from their seats in panic, but the Doctor's voice reassured them.

'We have made bottom—5,180 feet!'

They stared out through the fused quartz windows hoping to see something although they hardly knew what. Not temples and palaces of course but perhaps a great section of wall or part of a pyramid and they were vaguely disappointed when they saw that the strong beam of blue light revealed nothing except a barrel shaped fish and part of a mushroom like jelly with a trailing yellow skirt.

The bathysphere had landed on a gentle slope and so was tilted at an angle throwing the beam slightly up. The Doctor moved the lighting apparatus so that the long turquoise finger moved down towards the ground. Then they saw that they had landed on barren calcareous rock. There were no long waving fronds of seaweed, sea anemones, sponges or crustaceans to be seen. No trace at all of any undersea vegetation, for the multiform life of the beaches ceases entirely at a far lesser depth than that to which they had come being, like all vegetation dependent for existence on the light which filters down to it from the sun.