Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

Count Axel sighed, then he said slowly, 'I'm afraid you've forgotten my friend that we are bolted in. Our two ton door is screwed down from outside. Escape is quite impossible and our oxygen will only last us just over another hour.'

Trapped in the Sphere

Count Axel's sober statement brought them crashing down from wild heights of excitement to a new level of despair. It was true. They were still sealed in the sphere and any attempt to break out of it must prove as hopeless as if they had been locked into the strongest vault under the Bank of England.

For a moment they were frozen into silence then Nicky cried: 'Look—look! There's something moving on that wall out there!'

As they stared a bulky greyish mass appeared out of the darkness and they saw they were right in supposing the wall to form a quay, for the mass came forward and it was recognisable as a solid block of countless human figures.

'Saved by Crikey!' exclaimed Vladimir. 'Camilla! We are saved I say 1'

She had come out of her faint again and, picking her up bodily, he held her so that she could see out of the port. A fresh wave of tremulous hope surged through the others. If these were human beings they would surely find some way to unscrew the door bolts of the sphere and let its occupants out.

But how could they be? In breathless silence Camilla and her friends pressed their faces to the windows and watched the advancing mob. They appeared human, yet they moved in darkness. No trace of light except the beam of the Doctor's torch and the luminosity of the creatures packed tight about the sphere, showed in this great undersea cavern; and the newcomers carried neither flares nor torches. Moreover, they wore no clothes or ornaments;

everyone of them was stark na ked and their bodies were an unhealthy greyish white.

'They're not human,' whispered Sally. 'And they are horrible—horrible.'

The McKay felt too that there was something utterly repulsive about that crowd of nude leprous looking bodies huddled on the quay, but he was not so ready to exclude them from the human race. They were a small people, the tallest among the males being only about five feet in height, but they certainly were not monkeys and each of them held a long spearlike weapon in his hand. Their bodies were hairless except for the pale, lank, almost white hair which grew sparsely on their narrow skulls. Their faces were curiously uniform with large parroty, wide nostrilled noses, heavy lidded, almost colourless eyes, large mouths filled with white even gleaming teeth, and weak underhung jaws, yet they had nothing of that savage look which had characterised the faces of the Mermen.

No leader appeared to control or direct their movements. They pressed forward, then sideways, all together, like a herd which scents danger or fresh pasture, in a wind. One of them slipped and fell from the quayside into the mass of fish. A great squid reached out a tentacle and curled it, snake-like, round his neck.

The others made no attempt to help him but stood there gibbering and twitching their heads from side to side, as though they knew what had happened without glancing down, but were only concerned with acute anxiety for themselves.

The one who had fallen fought and struggled, striving to break the grasp of the tentacle with one stubby claw-like hand and stabbing frantically with his long sharp spear, but the squid reached up three more tentacles and, wrapping them round his arms and torso, dragged him down.

It was all over in a moment, almost before Nicky had time to gasp: 'Why don't they help him?' and Sally moaned.

Upon the quayside the great mob had steadied. The front rank threw themselves upon their knees, the others pressed up behind them leaning across their shoulders then, as though upon a common impulse rather than at any word of command, they all began to stab downward with their spears, striking again and again at the heaving fish below.

The torrent of blows was so fast and regular that nothing could live under it; the long spears reached right down to the bottom of the harbour and soon even the tentacles of the squids had ceased to wave, for every creature within six feet of the quay was dead—stabbed through and through a dozen times.

Suddenly, like a herd once more, the whole mob leapt from the quay wall into the slippery sea of carcasses and attacked the still living creatures further out with the same rhythmic stabbing. A spear struck the bathysphere, another and another. The party inside it could not hear the clang of the blows upon the metal but they realised then, that this strange race of half men was blind.

As the mob advanced, wading waist high in the slimy shoal of dead sea creatures, a small fat woman with enormous hanging breasts stumbled head first against the bathysphere. She opened her mouth in what appeared to be a scream and, almost instantly the mouths of all the others opened too, then, as one man, they turned and fled. Floundering, slipping, thrusting each other aside they fought their way back to the quayside, and scrambled on to it. There they turned again and crouched in a great huddle, their spears upraised, staring blindly out towards the sphere.

'We'll get no help from them,' declared the McKay bitterly. 'They're wild things and blind I think. Anyhow they wouldn't know a rivet from a cocoanut.'

'Is there no way we can get out ourselves,' Sally asked with sudden desperation.

'None I fear, Fraulein,' declared the Doctor gently. 'The door is riveted down and the bottom—well, that is impossible.'

'What's that 1' snapped the McKay. 'Is there an entrance in the bottom?'

'No entrance Herr Kapitan but the bottom of the sphere is not solid as the sides. It has four layers of steel plates with supports between which will resist equal pressure. Each can be unscrewed in turn to enable us to get at the machinery which operates the claws, the dredges, and the drill.'

'Why the hell didn't you tell us that before?' the McKay blazed out at him.

'I never thought to see the bathysphere upon its side 214

which alone makes such exit possible,' protested the Doctor, 'and, since our arrival here, our every moment has been taken by watching these strange people; besides it would take two men a whole day's hard work to remove enough of the machinery to get out that way and we have oxygen to last us now an hour and a half only.'

'Reduce the oxygen supply to half. Show a light on the bottom, and give me a screw driver,' ordered the McKay.

'It is useless, Herr Kapitan,' the Doctor's voice was apathetic. 'If we had six and a half hours oxygen as when we were first cut off it might be done. But now—no. You will tear your fingers for nothing. The hundreds of screws and joints to be-'

'Do as I tell you—I'm taking charge here now.' The McKay pulled another torch from his pocket and thrust it into Sally's hand. 'Take that. I brought it on the off chance the lights might fail. The more light we have now the better.

The Doctor shrugged. 'I have a dozen torches here in case of need but this attempt is useless. We shall be dead before-'

'Stop talking, damn you. It uses oxygen and every ounce of that is precious now. Issue four torches and keep the rest in reserve. Everyone's to remain silent till we're out. Nicky! Axel! Bozo! you're to remain in the back of the sphere, away from its bottom. You two girls hold the torches—give you something to think about. Vladimir, you're the strong man. Come and help move the plates as we get them up. Doctor, how many screwdrivers have you got in your chest?

'One large—one small.'

'Good, give me the large one then—thanks. Use the other yourself. You know the machinery. Silence now—get busy.'

They obeyed him without questioning his commands. He stripped off his coat, flung it down to kneel on and began to attack the screws in the sphere's wooden floor.