Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

Sally stopped shivering. Just those four first words: 'Once upon a time,* had caught her back from that maze of dread speculations; yet she was not listening to him as he went on; she was thinking of one thing only now. The full realisation that she loved him with all her heart and soul, had just come upon her. He might be nearly twice her age and grey haired, but he had all a young man's virility and in his heart lay youth tempered by a great gentleness. That his concern for her was so great that he could put aside the thought of his own approaching end in an endeavour to distract her, like a little child, with a fairy story touched her more deeply than any experience she had ever known. She lowered her head against his chest and burst into a violent storm of tears.

'What is it then. What is it Sally m'dear?' he asked tenderly as he stroked her hair. 'Listen to the story I'm telling you and try and forget everything else. Now these three sisters lived-'

'The fish!' exclaimed the Doctor suddenly. 'What is the matter with the fish?'

They all roused and stared out of the portholes. Something unusual was obviously happening outside. The lights had ceased to dance, every single one of them was streaming now in one direction, back from the open space, perhaps upon the western verge of the Atlantean city, where the bathysphere had fallen, towards the shelter of the ruins.

For a moment the prisoners in the bathysphere watched in wonder. Lights of every size and colour streaked by. There could be no doubt whatever that these creatures of the deep were fleeing in terror of their lives, just like animals before a forest fire, and the danger they feared was coming up out of the deeper waters to the westward.

The numbers of lights increased. The things outside dashed themselves against the fused' quartz windows in their frantic panic to escape. They seemed to burst, scattering clouds of luminous food and multitudes of coloured stars. The press became so great that, for the first time since the electric wires had broken, the group in the sphere could see each other's faces faintly illuminated in the unearthly radiance caused by this multitude of terrified creatures.

Then the lights dimmed, and the cataract of racing flashes ceased, yet a number of bright blotches hovered at the portholes bobbing feebly up and down as though their owners were caught in the crush and could not escape.

The Doctor switched on his torch and by it they saw that a solid writhing mass of fish and squids and prawns were now jammed up against the windows. Not an inch of water showed and the surface of each port was covered completely by wriggling tentacles and fins. Suddenly the bathysphere began to move.

'Gott in Himmel!' exclaimed the Doctor. 'What now!'

Slowly but surely the sphere moved sideways and was drawn along the surface of the ocean bed surrounded by the press of captive fish. The party sat tight and held their breath, utterly bewildered by this extraordinary phenomenon. They were dragged about a hundred yards, as far as they could judge, then the sphere tilted gently and fell over sideways.

Sally screamed—Camilla fainted—the others clutched wildly at each other as they were flung sprawling against the side of the sphere which held the searchlight and had now become its bottom. Yet there was no violent shock as they turned over. The sphere seemed to be sinking as though it had fallen over a cliff, and the second they had sorted themselves out the Doctor flashed his torch on the ports.

Nothing was to be seen. Only the mass of writhing creatures still pressed against the windows. For nearly fifteen minutes the feeling that they were sinking, first gently, then quite fast, then gently again, continued while they strove to revive Camilla and examined the damage which had been done. Fortunately the tanks were safe and still functioning, only the now useless lighting apparatus had been smashed. Camilla came round and went off again. Sally and Nicky were babbling half hysterically while the rest were wrought up to an almost unendurable pitch of excitement, although they were too staggered even to hazard an opinion as to what was going on outside.

Suddenly they knew that they had ceased moving yet their downward motion had been checked so gently that it was almost as though they were attached to the cable and only halting for one of the hose ties to be put on. There was a pause of about two minutes then, whatever held them pressed in the mass of fish, began to haul them in a fresh direction.

They started to bump a little and the Doctor cast anxious 209

eyes on the tanks where the spotlight of the torch showed them tilted at an angle. The sphere rolled over again, but not very much this time, only sufficient to make it necessary for them to change the place where they were crouching to a few feet nearer the door. The jolting ceased and they were sinking once more—still further into the abyss.

'What the thunderin' blazes is happening,' growled the McKay. It was the first coherent remark which emerged from the almost perpetual cries of fear and astonishment following their upset.

'We have been swallowed with these many fish,' said Vladimir. 'We are now as that poor Joshua in the belly of a whale.

'I do not think so,' the Doctor shook his head. 'We know little yet about life in the great deeps but it is quite unreasonable to suppose the existence of any such gigantic species. A swallow large enough to pass the bathysphere as part of a single gulp would need a submarine monster as great as a two-thousand-ton ship—I do not believe it possible.

'Besides,' Count Axel added, 'we were dragged along the sea door, sank several hundred feet, were dragged again, and are now sinking once more. Our movements would be quite different if we were in the stomach of some undreamed of Leviathan.'

As he ceased speaking they came to rest as gently as before. There was another pause then, for the third time the sphere was dragged sideways. They had to move again. The door was now almost at the bottom of the sphere, the ports were tilted upward at an angle in the slope of what was now the ceiling. For ten minutes the sphere moved forward, jerkily at times, while they lay or crouched among the broken canvas chairs and debris in its bottom.

It halted again and remained quite still. Then the blotches of light at the portholes began to move more freely. The Doctor lifted the beam of his torch from the cylinders to the ports and they saw that the pressure upon the great shoal of living creatures outside had been released. They were no longer jammed tight, but a seething mass leaping and thrashing in the water. After a moment bubbles appeared then foam and a little wavelet splashed against the fused quartz. The fish slid downwards and disappeared.

A water line now showed in the top sections of the ports then sank jerkily until that too was gone.

The Doctor stumbled to his feet and held his big torch close to one of the windows, the others craned their necks, standing on the broken chairs, to peer out over his shoulders.

Outside it was pitch dark and the beam did not carry to any roof above them, but in front and a little higher than the level of the sphere they could just make out a wall that had a flat even surface and seemed like the side of a stone quay. All about them were a solid mass of squirming fish and squids of every colour and variety which stretched right up to the wall and on either side of them as far as they could see. The bathysphere was half buried in them right up to the lower edges of its ports which were now almost at the top of the sphere.

'Where in heaven's name are we?' gasped Nicky.

'I don't know and I don't care!' exclaimed the McKay with sudden excitement, 'but there's air outside—air. Come on! We've got to get out of here.'