Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

Crouching behind the winches two of them took pot shots at Kate but he dived again and the bullets missed him. Two more machine guns were brought into play by his men.

Three streams of bullets now thudded zipped, whined as they sprayed the deck and ricochetted from the machinery. The sailors were compelled to keep behind their cover and under such terrific fire dared not peer out to risk another shot.

Landon Macy, back behind the crane house was rapidly semaphoring his ship, to tell them of the hidden plane.

His Commander had heard the shooting and ordered out another boat with reinforcements. Now, he stood gripping the bridge rail with a little group of officers and men behind him all taking in Landon Macy's signals. None of them had yet seen the plane which lay concealed behind Doctor Tisch's ship but immediately they realised what was happening orders were given for an anti-aircraft gun to be prepared for action immediately the plane left the water.

Kate was being hauled aboard at the very moment the order was given. Then engines of the plane burst into a roar. With hardly a seconds delay it began to move swiftly over the smooth water while its machine guns still kept up a heavy fusillade to cover its retreat.

By the time the canvas gun-covers had been removed the amphibian had already circled into the wind and risen in the air.

With frantic haste the gun's crew loaded up and sighted their weapon. The plane had climbed five hundred feet.

Suddenly it swerved, losing height a little. Then shot up at so sharp an angle that it seemed certain it must stall and come crashing down tail first into the water; but Kate's pilot was an ace and knew his business. The pompom gave a series of staccato cracks, but the livid flame of the shell bursts surrounded by their fleecy clouds of grey smoke were three hundred feet beneath him.

The attempts to bring down the plane continued. The Commander of the destroyer, a little man, not unlike the McKay in his general appearance, got redder and redder in the face as Kate's amphibian rose higher in the air, successfully avoiding the successive bursts of shell fire from the anti-aircraft gun by constant dives, twists, and changes of direction.

Landon Macy and his men stood gaping skywards on the scarred after deck among Doctor Tisch's machinery, praying for a hit which would bring down the plane, but after a few moments the gun on the destroyer ceased fire. The amphibian was now only a black spot in the bright blue sky disappearing swiftly to the westward.

As the men moved to pick up the wounded, Landon Macy suddenly thought of the bathysphere again. He ran to the crane house. The engineer was lying hunched at the foot of the starboard ladder, blood dripped slowly from hi:, shattered head into a great pool on the deck. He had been caught in the first burst of machine gun fire and was quite dead. The other members of the crew had dived below to safety.

The Lieutenant Commander sprang up the ladder. The big lever was still turned right over to 'full out' where Kate had jammed it. The cable was sizzling through the steel blocks above it at a terrific speed. They would have been on fire with the heat caused by the friction if they had been wood. The great drums were whirling round like the wheels of a locomotive as the cable left them, the whole machinery hummed and vibrated like a powerful dynamo at full beat. Landon Macy gave the roaring machinery one anxious glance then grabbed the lever. As he jerked it back to stop the bathysphere crashing on the bottom its gears grated harshly—then it slid into reverse.

14

The Last Dive

On the day after Kate's seizure of the ship the McKay, almost as a matter of routine, had played with his gold pencil and a piece of paper for half an hour until he had drafted a brief message stating the situation without one unnecessary word. It began: 'S O S. Do not acknowledge. Relay to Admiralty.' Then followed a concise account of Kate's conspiracy.

That night, and each night since he had morsed the report by means of the light switch in his cabin at least a dozen times between ten o'clock and dawn, taking his sleep in three hour stretches. He had felt convinced that providing his little game was not stopped through one of the people on the bridge spotting the reflection of his flashes in the water, the message would certainly be picked up sooner or later, and help arrive; although he had no great hopes of getting it through until they crossed the great shipping belts on the way south to the Falklands.

When he scrambled into the bathysphere at 8.45 on the morning after the explosion therefore, he had not the least idea that his signals had been picked up the night before and that the Admiralty had ordered a destroyer to be detached from a flotilla which was proceeding to the Bermudas, for their rescue.

Sally insisted that since this was his first dive he should be given one of the canvas chairs nearest the portholes and, to get him settled in it, needed considerable manipulation owing to his having been last through the door. The bathysphere had been designed to hold eight persons and it was now full to capacity Camilla, Sally, Axel, Vladimir, Nicky,

Dr. Tisch, the McKay and the gunman Bozo made up the party. Sally, the McKay and the Doctor, who controlled the searchlight, had the better seats, Camilla, between two of her lovers, Axel and Vladimir, sat behind them, while Nicky as volunteer telephonist, with Bozo, who made a point of having his back against a wall, occupied places by the door.

As the sphere went under the McKay was not particularly intrigued. Three aurelia jellies drifted by and a big shoal of arrow worms then, at their first halt they saw a Puppy Shark about two feet in length with a Pilot fish beneath it. A hundred feet lower the strange exhilaration of that unearthly blue light had begun to get hold of him a little and he leaned forward to peer at a big Snapper which goggled in at him, pressing its face close to the window. A moment later a whole battalion, several hundreds strong, of great blue Parrot fishes came into view swimming almost vertically downwards and through them, in a horizontal direction passed a division comprising thousands of smooth silvery Sardines. The effect of this warp and woof as the two different coloured schools passed through each other was indescribably lovely. Similar sights had often been seen by the others since they occurred several times on every dive, but it was new to the McKay and he admitted to himself that the small element of risk involved in a single trip, now that the bathysphere's resistance had been proved, was worth it.

He was peering out of the porthole with his face so close to the fused quartz at 500 feet that his breath condensed upon it and he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe away the moisture.

'Good God!' he exclaimed, 'what's happened?' He knew quite well that the handkerchief was a bright scarlet silk bandana patterned in green. Now it appeared dead black and the design had vanished.

The Doctor gave his throaty chuckle. 'The red rays of the sun no longer penetrate to here Herr Kapitan. I was surprised myself when I first beheld this strange phenomenon, although I knew it to be so from accounts of deep sea diving.'

At 800 feet the deep blue light remained but everything had taken on a ghostly form. Strange shadowy shapes flickered past and as the sphere descended further many of them began to show luminosity. When they came to rest at 1,600, five fishes swam past with blotches on them which glistened like tinfoil in the grey blue darkness then some unseen organism spat out a rocket-like burst of luminous fluid.

At 2,000 feet the Doctor put on the light for a few moments and a shoal of brilliant silver fish were caught in it turning like a flight of birds. Later they saw a creature with two large reddish lights in front and a constellation of smaller ones, all pale blue, then a great Squid with light organs encircling its eye, but the teeming life changed so constantly as the sphere was lowered that they caught little more than a glimpse of individual specimens and had no time to examine one tenth of all the marvels that passed the windows.