Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

Having reached the scene of action he took the deck telephone from the man who was in communication with the bathysphere and shouted down it:

'Below there?'

'Yes,' Oscar's voice came up over the line clear and untroubled from 3,000 feet beneath him.

'Captain McKay presents his compliments to Doctor Tisch. There's bad weather ahead. Tell the Doctor we mean to reel you up at top speed and that he's to inform the ladies they have no need to be alarmed if they get a bit of a bumping—got that?

'Jawohl, Herr Kapitan,' came the rather scared acknowledgement.

'Right. Now we'll have no time to coil the telephone hose down so it may kink and cause the wires to break. If you are cut off you'll know that's what has happened so sit tight and don't worry.'

'Jawohl, Herr Kapitan, Oscar replied in an even fainter voice and, despite the McKay's injunctions not to worry, if Oscar could have seen the great black clouds which now obscured the sun he would have been very worried indeed. The bathysphere was not built to be hurled about in a violent storm or the cable intended to take the strain of spasmodic jerks from a ship pitching and tossing in heavy seas.

The McKay thrust the instrument back into the operators hands and began to snap out orders. At first the seamen regarded him with hostile surprise as an interfering civilian, but they very soon understood that they were dealing with a man who knew his business. The crane began to reel in the cable at its utmost speed, a man with a sharp knife was set to slash the ties holding the rubber hose to it as they flashed past, and the hose itself was hauled on board coil after coil in wild confusion by all the hands that could be mustered. It wreathed and knotted in great loops and festoons despite their efforts to control it but the McKay felt that it mattered little if the wires it contained were broken in consequence. His one concern was to get the sphere up before it became impossible to land the party.

The sea began to heave in a long rolling swell, the sinister moaning of a distant fast travelling wind reached them; great heavy single drops of rain hit the deck with a sharp crack then, at ten minutes to three, the storm burst with the bathysphere still 1,500 feet under water.

The crew may have been the riff-raff of the seven seas who had accepted quadruple wages to shut their eyes to any irregularities which might occur on this unusual voyage, but they were sailors by profession and understood the brotherhood of the sea. That lifelong enemy of them all—the ocean—had risen against them. There was a job of work to be done and though the rain sheeted down in cataracts soaking them to the skin they stuck to it without a thought of questioning their unofficial orders. The McKay stood there short and square and grim at the after rail but cloaked in all the natural authority which came from years of comamnd at sea and, to his occasional shouts there came back a cheerful 'Ay, ay, Sir!' as they jumped to do his bidding.

The ship was pitching heavily and every few moments a wave hit the stern with a loud thump, sending clouds of spray over the streaming men as they fought and struggled with the seemingly endless hose pipe. For one moment the McKay considered sending a message to Captain Ardow asking that the vessel should be headed due west to bring them under the lee of Pico Island but any movement of the ship would mean added strain upon the cable, so he did not dare to risk it.

The wind increased to half a gale, moaning through the rigging. The McKay cocked an anxious eye at the masthead to judge their degree of pitch and was not comforted by what he saw. Captain Ardow had the ship just under way and head on to the storm but the waves were breaking over the bow and each time their main bulk surged below the hull the stern lifted right out of the water. The bathysphere was up to 500 feet, but the McKay knew that the strain on the cable must be appalling. It might snap at any moment. He sprang up a ladder into the control room of the crane house.

'We'll have to play her like a fish,' he told the engineer. 'Steady now—watch for my signals,' then he clung to the doorway—peering out through the sheeting rain to judge the lift of the ship and raising or lowering his arm in accordance with it.

As the stern was buoyed up on each successive wave crest the bathysphere cable was allowed to run out fifty to one hundred feet, then as the strain slackened it was checked and, when they sank into the trough, reeled in with the utmost rapidity.

For close on half an hour the crane man played the bathysphere under the McKay's directions like a salmon trout while the ship rode through the storm, but at last they got it to the surface and now the most difficult part of their task began. They had to land the sphere on its steel supports without staving it in against the girders.

The risk entailed in this proceeding was so considerable that the McKay was almost inclined to leave the sphere dangling fifty feet under water, despite the awful buffeting that its inmates must be receiving, but he had no idea how long their oxygen supply would hold out. The storm might well continue to increase in violence and not blow itself out for forty-eight hours. It was certain now that it would no abate that day and if he left them there they might all be dead by morning.

In consequence he called for volunteers to man a boat. Half a dozen of the crew stepped forward and he went over the side with them.

Another half hour elapsed. Hampered by their cork jackets, their fingers numbed and slippery from the driving rain they tossed up and down beside the bathysphere striving to attach the rope guys to the steel eyelets, but at last the job was accomplished. Battered and breathless they scrambled back on to the deck, then came the tense moment when the crane and winches were brought into play.

The McKay stood with his left arm round a stanchion and his right raised in the air. He waited for a big wave to break and then, as the ship sank into the trough, gave the signal. The bathysphere was lifted almost entirely out of the water, the winches clanked, the ropes pulled taut and drew it suddenly towards the stern of the ship. There was a loud clang on the girders and when the ship rose again it had been landed.

The whole platform was awash waist high every other moment but the McKay and two other men were lowered to it with ropes round their bodies and succeeded in getting undone the bolts which held the sphere door in place, and ten minutes later the diving party had been hauled to safety.

They were a pitiable sight, bruised, ill, terrified. Count Axel alone among them was able to climb the ladder to the deck; the rest had to be carried up bodily. Vladimir was unconscious, having hit his head against the steel wall of the sphere when thrown violently sideways by a heavy wave. Nicky's face was chalk white and the Doctor's a bilious green. Oscar had fainted and both the girls were trembling and retching in desperate bouts of sea-sickness.

The sailors carried them to their cabins. Camilla's maid put her mistress and Sally to bed while Slinger sent the stewards to look after the others. Count Axel attended to a nasty cut on his face, changed into dry clothes and then staggered up the heaving companion-way to the lounge. He found the McKay there already changed, busy mixing himself a badly needed whisky.

'Drink?' said the McKay gruffly.

'Thank you Captain, that was an exceedingly unpleasant business.'

'That's putting it mildly—you're darn lucky to be alive in my opinion.'

'You're right, and we owe our lives to you so Slinger tells me. I can only hope for some opportunity to repay you.'

The McKay shrugged. 'Don't thank me—thank the men. Whatever the risk to themselves they never hesitated for a second to obey my orders. It is a pity though that you should have got off lightly. You deserve to be below retching up your heart with the women.'