Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

'This will be the opposite end to where the bathysphere came in,' said the McKay. 'It looks as if the cavern is an oval shape cut lengthwise by the quay. We'd better about turn and try the other way.'

'Oh, I'm so tired!' Camilla leaned heavily on Nicky who was her flank guard, 'I can hardly walk another step!'

'That goes fer me too sister,' Bozo mumbled, 'I'm not me-self somehow since your boy friend put me to sleep.' His thick skull had saved the back of his head from being split open when Vladimir had smashed it against the steel side of the sphere, but ever since he regained consciousness he had been suffering from a worse headache than he had ever experienced after a bout of drunkenness on illegal hooch, and now he felt that, instead of a head he carried the bathysphere—rolling from side to side on his thick neck.

Sally stretched out a hand and touched the McKay on the arm. 'Can't we stay here and sleep a little,' she pleaded. 'We're safe from drowning in the sphere now and anyway— what's the use of going on?'

'Sure. What's the use?' agreed Nicky who had also been knocked out temporarily that day and was feeling utterly done in after his spate of terrified energy in helping to remove the machinery from the bottom of the sphere. 'What do you hope to find if we go on—the Ritz-Carlton Grill Room round the corner or a handy Lyons?—For God's sake let's call it a day.'

'I was hoping to find a cave with a narrow entrance where we'd be reasonably safe for the time being,' said the McKay slowly. 'What do you think Count?'

'I am for remaining here,' Count Axel replied at once. 'If we were fresher I would say "push on" but half our party, at least, are unfit to proceed any further. It might even be necessary to carry them later and that would be a terrible handicap if we were attacked. Our present position is not so bad. We are in a triangle of which the wall forms one side and the quay another, so we have only one of three sides to defend. Let us remain here for a few hours until we are rested.'

The McKay nodded. 'AH right then—we'll park down for the night.'

His decision was an unutterable relief to the party. Camilla, Sally and Nicky were already sitting on the rocky floor, gratefully seizing the opportunity for even a short rest, while the stronger members of the group sagged as they stood, dumb now—their energies at the lowest ebb from their terrible experiences in the last fifteen hours.

No rocks or boulders were available for them to form a barrier across their exposed front, so for a moment, the McKay considered the possibility of erecting trip-wires fifty feet out in the darkness to give them warning of any hostile approach. He had the necessary material, salvaged from the bottom of the sphere, but there was nothing to which wires could be attached on that even floor and improvising supports meant fetching more gear from the abandoned bathysphere. The business would involve at least two hours' hard work for the whole party so he had to give up the idea and they all sank down unprotected at the extremity of the quay wall where they stood.

The McKay arranged that he and Axel should take the first watch and that Vladimir and the Doctor should relieve them after two hours had passed. He did not dare to make the spells of duty longer in case he and Axel dropped off into a doze. They were both feeling the strain and fatigue of the nightmare sequence of events as much as the others and only refrained from showing it in the same degree because the one had reserves of mental strength to draw upon and the other the life-long habit of responsibility.

Vladimir tried to make the two girls as comfortable as possible. He sat between them with his back against the wall and, placing an arm round each of their shoulders drew their heads down on to his broad chest. The other men curled up on either side of them, so weary that they hardly noticed the hard discomfort of the unyielding rock. Only the McKay and Count Axel remained, some feet in front of the group, side by side, still wide awake and watchful.

For a moment or two the six huddled figures by the wall endeavoured, in a groping way, to straighten out in their minds the extraordinary series of happenings which had brought them to their present situation. It was now one-thirty in the morning—eight and a half hours since the sphere had been carried into this undersea cavern, and in all that time their thoughts had been concentrated on immediate emergencies. They had not had one moment to speculate on their utterly miraculous escape from death or any explanation for the existence of this hidden world in which they found themselves. Now, their brains were so clouded with fatigue that they could not attempt to grapple with the problem and almost instantly surrendered to a heavy, death-like sleep.

The McKay and Count Axel, out in front, dared not relax and began to devise means to keep themselves alert. Fortunately a breakdown of the electricity supply from the ship when the bathysphere was on the bottom, was a normal possibility which the Doctor had foreseen, so the dozen torches which he had stowed in the ball against such an emergency were all new and large in size; but now, light was infinitely precious. In this grim underworld there could be no dawn to hope for and once the batteries ran out they would be completely at the mercy of anything which might steal upon them in the darkness. The McKay suggested that, to economise their light he and Axel should only use one flash every half minute—alternately. The necessity for regular switching on and off would help to keep them wakeful and, for the same reason it would be best to talk.

The Count agreed and, for what seemed an eternity they spoke in whispers, advancing every sort of fantastic theory to account for the nightmare place in which they had arrived, or speculating on the origin of the great herd of creatures who inhabited this subterranean domain. Even Count Axel was not bold enough to face the future squarely yet and he had formed a half belief that this was death. They had been so near the end when fighting to escape from the sphere that it seemed almost more reasonable to suppose that they had all died then—or even earlier, when the oxygen had given out without, perhaps, their being aware of it—than to credit the actual existence of their present surroundings.

The McKay's practical mind revolted equally from any attempt to foresee their future. It was unknown—unknowable. Obviously they were cut off completely and forever from the world above. This was no prison from which one could plan escape, no seeming impasse out of which wits and bravery might still find a way. When their torches failed they would be encompassed about with blackest darkness, and when they had consumed the last of their meagre supplies hunger and thirst would come upon them. Death must surely follow—either at the hands of those abominable submen or from weakness and exhaustion. Yet the 'will to live' is so strongly developed in the human consciousness that it never occurred to him not to play out the game of life to the very last trick.

At two-thirty he moved over to waken the reliefs and shook the Doctor into semi-consciousness, but when he saw Vladimir—his head fallen forward between those of the two girls—he knew that, to rouse the Prince, he must rouse them too so, instead, he shook Nicky by the shoulder.

Nicky started up and shuddered as though in the grip of some frightful dream but the McKay reassured him. Then he gave instructions about economising the light of the torches—told Doctor Tisch to wake him promptly at four-thirty, so that he could witness the changing of the guard— then he curled up on the hard floor at Sally's feet. Count Axel dropped beside him.

The Doctor and Nicky sat out in front now, the small pile of bombs between them, staring nervously ahead into the pitchy blackness of the great cavern.