Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

'Give it to me,' she said.

He pulled it from beneath his shirt where he had been carrying it and handed it to her.

A shout came from the McKay further up the passage. 'Come on—what the hell are you two waiting for?'

'What—what are you going to do?' stammered Axel his heart contracting in a hideous fear.

'Take it back,' she said simply. 'I must. It is one of the sacred documents of the Temple.'

'You can't,' he cried. 'You can't. It's too late—the herd will get you.'

'Come on!' yelled the McKay again his voice coming from a greater distance. 'There's daylight ahead—daylight.'

'I can,' said Lulluma. 'I shall hide in one of these passages until the lish eaters have gone, I can travel more swiftly than they can and my senses will warn me if they are near. I must go back Axel.'

The herd were pelting up the hill. Their gibbering filled Axel's ears, the stink of them was strong in his nostrils.

He grabbed Lulluma by the shoulders and tried to thrust her in the direction the rest of the party had taken, but she slipped away from him.

The McKay was holloaing, nearer again now. 'Where in God's name are you?'

Half stunned by distress Axel groped for Lulluma in the darkness. He caught a whisper.

'Axel. If I get back I shall never—what you call marry again—bless you.'

Then she had gone, diving into one of those side passages which she could discern but he could not.

He sank down on the ground and there, a second later, the beam of the McKay's torch found him.

'Lulluma's gone—gone back to her people,' he gasped as the McKay hauled him to his feet by his coat collar.

With shrill cries of triumph the beast men launched themselves upon them but the McKay held the half conscious Axel under the armpit and was literally forcing him along

as the herd clamoured at their heels. He knew now that daylight and safety lay ahead if only they could reach it.

Neither ever knew how they covered those last four hundred yards but in the latter part they were slipping and stumbling over seaweed.

Vladimir, carrying Love alone, had got Camilla up through a narrow gap in the rocks on to a long desolate shore lit by the afternoon sunshine.

Then he had dragged Sally out beside her. Now he returned into the entrance of the cave and grabbed Axel as he fell senseless.

The McKay scrambled up after them—then he turned and flung his last bomb into the opening. They heard the dull boom as the rocks lifted. The roof of the tunnel caved in and buried the first hundred of the beast men. The entrance of the passage seemed to tremble as though seen through a haze of heat then it dissolved into a mass of rocks, indistinguishable from those about it.

They had all reached the limit of endurance. Sally, Camilla and Axel sprawled senseless in a heap. Vladimir just witnessed the closing of the road that led downwards to Atlantis before his great legs gave way and he fell beside them.

For a moment the McKay stood there, his feet squarely planted, as he drank in the gentle breeze, the salt sea air, the blessed sunlight, then he pitched forward—unconscious but triumphant.

The following is an extract from a letter written some considerable time later by Count Axel Fersan on Pico Island to Mrs. N. A. McKay—then in the United States of America.

Another season has passed and I am again compelled to abandon any search owing to the great gales which now sweep the beaches here.

You might well imagine that I know every yard of the desolate south and east coasts of Pico by this time, but when you and your beloved Captain come to stay with me next summer, as you have promised, you will appreciate the immense difficulty of my task.

The rocky promontories and innumerable coves all look so much alike that even I, who have spent so many weary months here, still find it hard to distinguish one from another except by continual checking on my map.

At times I utterly despair of ever finding the exact spot where we were picked up half dead by the crew of the fishing boat, and even that would be only a beginning since, in our delirium, we wandered, probably several miles, along the shore after the McKay blew in the entrance of the tunnel; but those black moods never last and I am already longing for our short winter to be over so that I can get down to my search again.

For the rest, owing to your splendid generosity, I live in epicurean comfort. The Roman Villa which you had built to my design is not large as you know but, now that its gardens provide a suitable setting, very beautiful.

The nine fruit trees which I grew from the stones we saved are doing well. They occupy a little sheltered court containing nothing else, just below my window. I tend them with a more devoted care than any horticulturist ever gave to a black tulip or a blue rose, since they are the only tangible thing remaining of our journey to Atlantis. When you are here they will be in blossom and recall to you with startling vividness the beauty and the fragrance of my dear Luiluma.

You will be prepared, of course, for a very quiet time. There is hardly an educated person on the island but that suits me, since it eliminates the necessity for a tiresome exchange of visits and wasting time among people who would probably have little in common with myself. How ever, I do not lead a completely useless life as, owing once more to your generosity, I have been able to do much for the fisher folk along the coast.

They think me a little mad owing to my obsession with the foreshore but not entirely so. In fact they endeavour to ignore my eccentricity, with the natural politeness found among common people, and in other ways have come to regard me as a sort of overlord.

Instead of carrying their disputes to the courts or resorting to private vengeance they have formed the habit of bringing them to me and accepting my decisions as a basis for settlement. In return I could always have as much free labour as I wished—if I needed it—and hardly a morning passes without a gift of fruit or vegetables being left at my door by someone to whom I have had the good fortune to be of assistance.

My last mail brought me one of those delightfully humorous effusions from Vladimir. He and his 'so beautiful Princess' beg me again to visit them in Bucharest in order to see my little godson but, great as is the temptation, I cannot bring myself to leave the islands even for a month.

He tells me that plausible rogue Slinger is out of prison and that they met him a few weeks ago in Paris. When I am feeling very low I can still revive my sense of humour by thinking of Kate's rage when he realised how completely he had been fooled by two young women. No wonder you were so scared of his return, and so certain that he would come back vowing vengeance immediately he discovered that neither the carefully thought out letter to your lawyer nor the signature to the will itself were in the Duchess da Solento-Ragina's writing.

How infinitely wise you were my dear, after your first tragic marriage, to decide on changing identities with your cousin and how fortunate that you did so before Slinger came on the scene.

How marvellously too your plan to secure a husband who loved you for yourself, instead of a fortune hunter, succeeded. As long as I live I shall never forget the McKay's face when he learned that it was he who had married the real heiress to the Hart millions.

It is good to think of these things as I laugh little in these days.

My conviction that Lulluma got back safely remains unshakable. I believe that in all her spirit travels she comes to me here and at times I can almost feel the warmth of her beside me. But even if that is sheer imagination she was carrying enough fruit to satisfy her hunger and thirst for a week and I doubt if she had to remain hidden more than a few hours. The herd would certainly have returned to the harbour for their next feed of fish and after that the road would have been clear for her to repass the barrier.