Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

'Shut up,' snapped the McKay angrily.

'You're brave—I'm not,' Nicky protested with a whining snarl. 'I know you all blame me for this but what about the Doctor? Didn't he let us in for the whole business in the leginning? He's lucky to have got out of it so easily—that's what I say. We'll stagger round these passages for a few days until we've finished the fruit we've brought, then when were too weak to resist them those filthy beast men will creep up and eat us. I can't face it. I can't—I can't!'

'Shut up damn you!' roared the McKay. 'Aren't things bad enough without our having to listen to your snivelling!'

'All right! All right!' Nicky muttered then he suddenly gasped, 'What's that!' and next second gave a piercing scream.

Vladimir had crept forward fumbling in the darkness and, as his hands touched Nicky, reached up and grabbed him round the neck.

'Help!' gurgled Nicky. 'He—lp! he's strangling—me.'

Camilla had been the first to realise what was happening and she flung herself forward on the struggling pair.

'Vladimir. Stop!' she cried imperatively, wrenching at his great shoulders. 'I won't have you a murderer—for God's sake stop!'

He obeyed her almost before the others had time to move and turning took her in his arms.

'There—my so beautiful,' he soothed her. 'Our Public Cad Number One is frightened so it gives me pleasure to present him with something to be frightened for. If he opens his teeth again I will kick him as I have often thought to do with both boots of my feet—which someone has put on while I slept.'

'We all got into our original clothes before we came away,' Axel remarked, 'and naturally we dressed you and the McKay too. We have our old weapons as well and enough food to last us a week.'

'How about the torches?' asked the McKay. 'They're more important almost than anything. For God's sake don't say you forgot them, or have the batteries run down?'

'No, we have them here. I'm economising light—that's all.'

'That is not necessary,' Axel replied softly, 'we have one without showing a flash now and then?'

'That is not necessary,' Axel replied softly, 'we have on blessing at least though I would have robbed you of it if I could. Lulluma insisted on coming with us. Her mental faculties can penetrate this pitch black night and she will warn us in good time of the approach of anything evil.'

'Luiluma!' exclaimed the McKay.

'I am here,' her low voice came out of the impenetrable gloom close by. 'I have not quarrelled with my people and have done my duty to them, giving a man child and a girl so, though they grieved, they could not refuse to let me go. Your chances will be more than doubled by having me with you and, is it not said in your world above that a woman shall leave all and cleave unto the man she loves?'

'You are a daughter who would make proudness in the heart of Kings,' Vladimir declared while the McKay was left speechless with admiration at her courage, but Nicky caught at the word 'chances' and muttered churlishly.

'Luiluma and Axel talked about chances early this morning before we left the island. I overheard them—but now we're out here they say our hopes are slender as a thread.'

'Slender!' cried the McKay. 'What in heaven's name d'you mean! Is there any chance for us at all?'

Axel heaved a heavy sigh. 'You mustn't count on it please. The odds are so terribly against our scheme being practical, but after Menes' decree last night, when you were all down and out, I thought of it and Luiluma did the rest. She took me to the library—a place that none of us knew before—in a secret room at the back of the temple. There were hundreds of books there—at least writings done with a fine iron point on sheets of copper.'

'Go on man,' urged the McKay.

'Well, we worked frantically all night there and at last we found a plan of the original Atlantean mine workings. You remember what Menes told us about Zakar's attempt to break out. This is the gallery that he travelled when he made his great effort to reach the mountain peaks still remaining above water that we call the Azores.'

Camilla trembled. 'There is a hope for us then. There is a hope?'

'A faint one, no more. Zakar or his companions had actually used the map we found and marked ail sorts of things upon it. The water-logged galleries and chambers are clearly etched in. This road to the upper world which he tried to clear had many notes beside it. Luiluma translated them for me. They show the places where he drove the beast men that he had under his control into clearing great falls of rock, sometimes several yards in length. They show too the spot where tragedy overtook him. He was very near the surface then but the passage is still blocked. The Atlanteans of his own generation could not clear it, after he was killed, without slave labour but there is just a possibility that we might succeed by using our dynamite.'

'Good God man! Why didn't you say this before,' the McKay exclaimed. 'Come on now all of you—which way does this passage run?'

Axel flashed his torch to the northwestward but his voice was still heavy with doubt as he went on. 'I do beg you all not to count on this. Even if we can blast our way through the blockage that held up Zakar's friends, there may be others beyond which are quite impassable.'

'No matter,' cried the McKay. 'I'll not throw in the sponge until I know myself we're sunk for good,' and grabbing Sally's arm he began to stride along the tunnel.

'Better go steady,' Axel advised as he followed with the rest. 'We've got the best part of ten miles to cover before we even reach the place where the tunnel's marked as choked and every yard of it will be uphill.'

The McKay checked his pace a little, but pressed on eagerly with a brief remark. 'We'll rest for ten minutes in every hour we have to march.'

For half an hour they progressed, almost in silence, through the long straight upward sloping mine galleries which turned at sharp angles now and again—flashing their torches every few moments—then Lulluma said:

'Be careful. We come to a great- chasm soon here.'

Axel's torch picked it up a hundred yards further on. It was one of the rifts in the earth where the land had sunk. Across a black gulf only a blank wall of rock showed ahead, but Zakar had made steps in the cliff face and clinging to each other in couples they descended into the crevasse.

At a depth of eighty feet or more the tunnel showed again, its entrance supported by great blocks of masonry. They entered it and pressed forward, coming to one of the lofty chambers shortly after.

Here they took their first rest, but Lulluma startled them just as they started off again by saying, 'The beast men have

been here quite recently. I can feel it. They are not far

away.'

Only the occasional flash of a torch stabbed the darkness as they tramped on, but they moved more warily now, filled with apprehension.

A broken section where the roof of a gallery had fallen in impeded their progress for a little and Vladimir swore loudly, having stubbed his toe against a sharp piece of rock.

Another chasm, this time of lesser depth, was negotiated, and then they entered a seemingly endless tunnel which sloped steeply uphill. A mile up it they paused to rest again, but they had hardly regained their breath when Lulluma pressed against Axel and whispered, 'The beast men. They have crossed our trail and scented it. They are following us now.'

McKay heard her and called for silence, but although they all strained their ears to listen they could not catch the faintest sound. The very silence of the grave brooded over those chill black catacombs untrodden by man for over a hundred centuries.

'Are you sure you're not mistaken?' he asked after a moment.