Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

It was only when they broke into a walk and Vladimir cried, 'Where's Bozo?—he is with us no more,' that they halted dead in their tracks.

Vladimir was right. The gunman had vanished, felled by a stone on the head perhaps—he must have dropped without a sound as they fled.

'We must go back,' announced the McKay without hesitation. 'We can't leave him in the hands of these brutes— they'll tear him limb from limb.'

The party turned. In two minutes they had covered the distance back to the entrance to the tunnel. It was empty, but in the great cavern an extraordinary and horrifying scene was in progress.

The luminous mist which rose above the pool lower down the slope showed hundreds of the squat grey figures gathered about it. At one point a compact little company carried a dark shape as ants would carry a dead grasshopper. It was Bozo and before any move could be made to stop them they threw him, with one heave, head foremost, to the bearded monster and his horrible companions in the oily pool.

Camilla, who felt that she had passed beyond all terror, bit into her knuckles and whimpered pitifully with a fresh access of fear.

Sally closed her eyes and leaned limply against the wall. 'Oh heaven! Then that's what will happen when they catch us!' she whispered half fainting with horror.

'He was unconscious,' said the McKay softly, 'or dead perhaps. We should have seen him struggling otherwise.'

Count Axel did not speak. It was fitting he thought, that the simplest among them should pass on first. Bozo had paid, no doubt, for the crimes he had committed purely as a means of livelihood. A low mentality, seduced in youth to easy living by carrying out the orders of his criminal superiors without thought of their consequences to other people. Axel judged his own sins and those of his friends to be of a more subtle kind, and such as the human law could take no ready hold upon. Some power had it seemed, decreed that they must suffer further agonies before they had worked off the debts they had accumulated in the life they had just left and be granted rebirth into a more pleasant existence.

The herd had now fallen face downwards in a densely packed circle round the pool. Grovelling, with arms outstretched, they beat their foreheads on the rocky floor, and twittered without cessation, as they made obeisance to the swirling waters into which Bozo's body had disappeared.

'Dagon!' exclaimed the Doctor suddenly.

'What?' asked Nicky unsteadily.

'They worship Dagon, answered the Doctor, 'or Ea, if you prefer that name. The oldest god of all. It is a sight I never dreamed of witnessing. He was the Sea-god. The fish with a man's head who came up out of the great waters and spewed up the earth at the very beginning of time. India and Chaldea both retained traces of this cult. Himmel! that I should see it practised is past belief.'

'Let's get away from here.' Even the McKay's voice was a shade jerky now.

They turned then and ran, retracing their steps on the 246

downward road through the tunnel which they had already partly traversed.

After covering half a mile they came out in another, smaller, cavern. It had only one other exit, as far as they could see, so they took that and proceeded into the unknown.

The ground sloped upward now and they felt intensely weary but under the McKay's leadership they stumbled on. This passage was narrower and seemed endless but after they had been marching for twenty minutes Count Axel broke the silence.

'Am I imagining it or is it lighter here?' He switched out his torch and they halted for a minute, then agreed that the impenetrable blackness had given way to a greyish murk.

'Another chamber ahead with some more of those revolting fishmen in a pool I expect,' said the McKay gloomily but, as they advanced again the greyness lightened and took on a warmer yellowish tinge.

They could see each other without the aid of their torches for the first time in many hours. Each thought how tattered and dishevelled the others looked and that their strained, anxious faces had aged ten years in a night.

For a few more moments they plodded on through the half-light until they came round a bend and saw the exit of the tunnel, an arch, brightly lit by what appeared to be golden sunshine.

With cries of surprise, hope, and wonder they ran the last hundred yards, then halted, grouped together in the archway, utterly amazed at what they saw.

It was a cavern, larger and loftier than any which they had yet entered; roughly oval in shape and brightly lit through all its length by a ribbon of steady unflickering golden light which ran round its roof; but the sight which held them spellbound was the luxuriant vegetation covering almost the whole of its floor space.

Only a narrow shelf of bare rock ran round the walls of the vast hall, then came a deep ditch—fifteen feet wide, filled with clear water. On the far side of this moat rose a waist-high cactus hedge whose needle-like spines made it an almost impassable barrier. Above the level of that thick prickly fence flowering shrubs and fruit trees grew in wonderful profusion while beyond, a grove of forty foot palm trees towered up, all but hiding a square pillar of rock which supported the centre of the lofty ceiling.

A heavy silence brooded over the sunlit scene which added to its unreality. No breath of wind stirred the leaves or palm fronds and no rustle in the undergrowth betrayed the presence of any animal life, yet the whole fairyland of verdure made the air balmy with the sweet perfume of its flowers and grasses.

The McKay stood staring across the narrow strip of water no longer trusting his eyesight, until exclamations from other members of the party assured him that they too could see this enclosed woodland paradise.

Dazed and bewildered they moved forward along the narrow shelf of rock outside the water-filled channel, seeking a bridge over it, but they made the whole circuit of the place without finding the least variation in the ditch or any break in the thick spiky hedge of cactus which grew like a low wall on its far side.

This orchard jungle was an island, secreted behind strong natural defences and there seemed to be no way it could be entered.

The party paused again about fifty yards from the tunnel entrance, opposite a climbing growth of wistaria heavy with blossom, which rose above the thorny hedge.

'We've damn well got to get in there somehow,* exclaimed the McKay.

Suddenly, as though in answer to his speech, the tendrils of the wistaria parted and a man stood there, framed in flowers and greenery, eyeing them, with extreme curiosity across the low cactus wall. He was as tall as Vladimir, beautifully proportioned, and as handsome as Nicky but his features had the firmness of middle age and he was olive-skinned. The graceful folds of a white linen garment edged with purple hung from his shoulders. His expression was serene and kindly. He smiled at them and said:

'Good morning.'

The Garden of the Gods

'Now,' said Sally, 'I know we're dead. I've suspected it for a long time but it's nice that we should still be together, isn't it? *

Count Axel nodded. 'We all died together in the sphere —quite painlessly. There is no other explanation for ... all this!'

'You are mistaken I think.' A gentle humour twitched the lips of the man beyond the cactus hedge. 'You do not look at all dead to me.'

The McKay's eyes were popping out of his head. With a rudeness quite contrary to his nature he ignored the stranger and addressed the others. 'He's speaking English. I heard him—can you hear him too?'

The man on the island seemed to be more amused than ever. 'I speak in English because I heard you use that language,' he said, 'but, if you prefer it I can talk with you in any one of the five tongues which are most commonly used in the modern world and I know enough of several others to get about without difficulty.'