Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

Count Axel Wins a Trick

The nightly gloom would have descended on them all again had not the McKay made a determined stand against it. He was utterly sick of the topic of their captivity and these endless discussions as to whether the faked will would be successfully contested and whether or no Oxford Kate would return to perpetrate some new villainy. They had, he felt, exhausted every possible avenue of speculation and now their only chance lay in waiting, with as much patience as they could muster, for some opportunity such as he had only missed by a narrow margin when the fishing boat had endeavoured to come alongside that afternoon.

Despite the fact that their uncertain future was dominating all their thoughts once more, he insisted on discussing the search for Atlantis which was now actually in progress.

Doctor Tisch rose readily enough to the bait and, after a few moments, Count Axel, guessing the McKay's purpose, loyally came to his assistance. In a quarter of an hour the others too found themselves examining the contour chart, plotted by the Doctor, of the ocean bottom from the dives they had already made, and listening to him with a revival of keenness as he poured out a mass of geological information.

He maintained that the sea floor was exactly as he had expected to find it and that he was not in the least discouraged by their lack of immediate success in locating the Atlantean city. In the cataclysm it might well have slipped laterally with the whole surface of the land a mile or so one way or another just as it had sunk downward at least a mile below its original level, but wherever it was all the buildings would have slid in the same direction and if they could sight one they would find all the others piled up as a great mass of monoliths and boulders in that immediate area.

'What proof have you got geologically that the sea bed here was ever dry land at all?' the McKay enquired.

The Doctor placed his stubby forefinger on an irregular patch of lightish blue in the centre of his map of the North Atlantic. The Azores were well inside it and it ran down towards the northern coastline of Brazil:

'Here,' he said, 'is the Dolphin ridge. The whole of that must once haf been land. All geologists are agreed on that. The inequalities of its surface—mountains—valleys—could not haf been made by deposit of sediment or submarine elevation according to the known laws. They could only haf been carved by agencies acting above the water level—rain —rivers and so on.'

The McKay studied the contour chart based on the bathysphere's dives again. 'There don't seem to be many mountains and valleys here,' he said.

'That Herr Kapitan, is local only. Here we are, as I anticipated, above a rolling plain.'

'In that case surely there's an easier method for you to conduct your search than by bobbing up and down in the bathysphere every quarter of a mile. The range of vision from that thing must be very limited. You might be within fifty yards of a great group of stones and never suspect their existence. In fact you might criss-cross this area every day for months without actually landing on the place you're looking for. There is an electric sounding machine fitted in this ship—why in the world don't you make use of it?'

'How does that work?' asked Sally.

'Eh!' he glanced across at her. 'Oh! a compression hammer released by electricity strikes on the ship's bottom and the echo, thrown back from the sea floor, is picked up by microphone, amplified and recorded. The longer the echo takes to come back the deeper the water is in that place.

The Doctor nodded. 'But tell me please how that would help us. To know the depths is of little use—we shall only discover by actual sight.'

'Listen,' the McKay leaned forward. 'These electric sounding machines are pretty accurate you know. They'll give you your depth to within half a fathom every time and the sea bottom we're over seems to be rather like a succession of gentle sloping downs; anyhow there's nothing jagged about it. Now you're hunting for a group of great stones twenty or thirty feet high at least—if not a hundred. All right then, if we sail up and down working the electric depth recorded as frequently as possible and it suddenly starts to show sharp variations that ought to be the place you want. You stop the ship at once and down you go in your sphere—see what I mean?'

'Himmel, yes! Why did I not think,' the Doctor cried with his fat face beaming. 'I thank you Herr Kapitan. That will be far quicker than our dives every quarter mile. Tomorrow we will try-'

'Time please ladies and gentlemen—time,' called Slinger with sardonic humour, suddenly appearing in the doorway with his men. And thus ended another day.

By seven o'clock next morning the fanatically eager little Doctor was up and dressed, and the moment he was let out of his cabin he sought Captain Ardow. The taciturn Russian made no difficulties and agreed with cold courtesy to his using the electric depth recorder. For four and a half hours the Doctor sat over it as the ship steamed at his request, round and round an outward spiral in a series of ever increasing circles. Depths from 850 to 902 fathoms were recorded, but the upward or downward curve of the graph never showed any sudden alteration. It was obvious that they were sailing round and round above the slopes of a rolling plain. Then at 11.30, more than seven miles south of the point from which they had started, the soundings suddenly became erratic. 901—893—900—890—888—897—. After which the echo did not reach the microphone clearly since the instrument only registered uneven scratches. The Doctor left it at the run to stop the ship proceeding further.

A quarter of an hour afterwards the bathysphere went under water, only the cautious McKay remaining, of his party, in the ship.

At 1.32 they had reached bottom and a message came up that they wished to rise 200 feet and then be towed a quarter of a mile towards the east, the drift of the ship having carried them to the west, despite the efforts of the officer on the bridge to keep, as nearly as possible on the spot at which they had halted.

The McKay was just finishing lunch when the movement had been executed and, as he came on deck, again, he wrinkled up his nose and sniffed a little. The sky was still serenely blue but somehow he didn't like it. There was an uncanny stillness in the air. Without the least hesitation he turned aft and, stepping over the rope barriers at the risk of being shot, addressed the two gunmen who were standing by the wireless house:

'Captain McKay presents his compliments to Captain Ardow and says he had better haul the bathysphere up at once because we're in for dirty weather.'

The men stared at him for a moment but, in a clear firm voice he repeated his message then turned his back and walked away to show that he had no hostile intentions, upon which one of them went off to find the Russian.

No reply came back, but the clanking of the great crane, very shortly after, informed the McKay that his advice had been accepted. He glanced at his wrist watch, the time was 1.45 p.m., then again at the sky. It was still perfectly clear but he did not like the uncanny hush that had fallen.

At 2.15 a small black cloud appeared on the horizon. The McKay studied it with grim foreboding. By 2.30 the whole sky in that quarter had become dark and threatening. There was still an hour to go before the bathysphere was due to reach the surface so the McKay again risked a bullet by telling the gunmen that, orders or no orders, he meant to go aft and take charge in the hope of expediting its arrival.

One of the men held him up with a pistol but the other went off to find Slinger and a few moments later returned with his consent to the McKay being allowed aft to superintend operations.