Dennis Wheatley: They Found Atlantis

THEY FOUND ATLANTIS

BY DENNIS WHEATLEY

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 all sorts of things upon it. The waterlogged galleries and chambers are clearly etched in. This road to the upper world which he tried to clear had many notes beside it. Lul-luma translated them for me. They show the place 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 . . . but there is just a possibility that we might succeed by using our dynamite.'

1

A Strange Craft

Funchal, the capital of Madeira, is on the south coast of the island. Its leisurely dealings in wine and sugar, lace and basketwork, hardly disturb the serenity of the little town. Its buildings, straggling out along a wide blue bay and up the foot of the mountain which rises steeply from the shore, white, cream, and lemon among the greenery of vineyards and cane brakes, face a limitless waste of sparkling waters and for the most part lie sleeping in the sun.

The western end of the bay is dominated by a high cliff upon which stands Reids Palace Hotel. That is the real centre of the island's life. Often, when a calling liner allows its passengers a few hours in which to stretch their legs ashore, two hundred extra places are laid for luncheon there, and all the year round holidaymakers come and go, basking for a week or two in certain sunshine, since the climate of the fortunate island rarely drops below seventy or rises above ninety in the shade.

Palms, oleanders, bougainvillea and magnolia trees rise from the semi-tropical gardens to screen the lower balconies of the hotel, then the cliff drops almost sheer, and a cactus-fringed stairway leads down to a rocky promontory upon which the hotel guests sunbathe between dips in the blue waters of the Atlantic.

The McKay had had his morning swim and baked the lean body, to which he was pleased to refer as 'the imperial carcass', a slightly deeper shade of golden brown. Now, with his Chinese robe girt tightly round him, he stood with his eyes glued to a pair of binoculars, watching a ship that had just come to anchor in the bay.

He was a shortish man but very upright, square-shouldered and square-headed. His hair, thick, wiry and close cut, except where it was brushed up from his broad forehead, had once been a violent red but was now only faintly sandy, the colour having been bleached from it until it had become almost white.

A girl with candid grey eyes and ripe-corn coloured hair was seated on the rocks near him.

'What do you make of her?' she enquired. 'I've never seen a queerer-looking yacht.'

'She's not a yacht, m'dear.' The McKay lowered his glasses and offered them. 'Take a look yourself. Fine feathers make fine birds they say but for all her brass and paintwork she's a tramp—or has been. It takes more than the addition of a few deck houses to deceive your old sailor man.'

'Thanks.' Sally Hart took the glasses and focused them upon the gaily painted ship with its unusual super-structure of white cabins forward and even stranger tangle of cranes, and massed machinery aft. 'But why,' she went on after a moment, 'do you persist in referring to yourself as if you had captained the Ark?—you're not really old at all.'

An appreciative grin spread over the McKay's face. It was lined from exposure to cutting wind, driving spray, and torrid sunglare on the bridges of the many ships in which he had served, but the webs of little wrinkles which creased up round the corners of his blue eyes were due to an irrepressible sense of humour.

'That's nice of you, m'dear,' he murmured, 'but I'm old enough to be your daddy and too old at forty-six to be given another ship. At least, that was the opinion formulated by their noble lordships of the Admiralty when they retired me last year—the blithering idiots.'

She shook her head. Til bet that wasn't the real reason. The British Admiralty like their sailors to be respectably married and have money when they reach captain's rank, so they can throw parties when they're in foreign stations. Naturally they axed a professional bad man like you who refuses to grow old and has no money or official wife—but a girl in every port.'

'If you're not careful I'll run you in for infringing the

official secrets act,* he countered quickly. 'You know too

much young woman—especially for a Yankee.*

Without removing the glasses from her eyes she shot out one bare foot and kicked him on the behind. 'How dare you call me a Yankee you ill-bred oaf. I come from California and don't you forget it. Now tell me please, what's that great ball thing hanging out from the rear of the ship?'

'Starn, dearie, starn, the word "rear" makes a sailor blush. I'm not certain what the ball thing is myself. It looks like the grandfather of all the buoys that ever were at this distance, but judging by photographs I've seen I'd hazard aguess that it's a bathysphere.'

'And what's a bathysphere Nelson Andy McKay?'

'A bathysphere, oh child of ignorance and sin. is a hollow steel ball constructed to resist enormous pressure. Adventurous souls like Dr. William Beebe, who invented it, climb inside; then their pals lower them into the depths of the ocean so that they can make long noses at giant octopuses through the super-thick portholes.'

'Of course—I remember hearing about Beebe's book "Half Mile Down". Would this be his research ship, then, I wonder?'

'No. I don't think she's Beebe's hooker. His bathysphere is quite a small affair. It holds only two divers and it's hoisted on and off the deck with a fair sized derrick— whereas that thing could hold half a dozen people and must weigh a hundred ton. That's why they ship it on those steel girders abaft the starn right down on the waterline I expect. It is about one third submerged already as you can see and they probably run it straight off the steel tracks so that the water carries part of its immense weight before it has to be taken up by that complicated system of cranes overhead.'

'Oh look!' Sally turned and pointed suddenly. 'Camilla and her boy friends are going off in the speed-boat toinvestigate.'

As she followed the foaming track of the speed-boat in its graceful curve towards the anchored mystery ship the McKay settled himself on his lean haunches and studied her excited young face at his leisure.

Sally's skin was good, her nose straight, her mouth full and red, hei teeth excellent, her eyes wide set but not largeenough to give her face distinction. She was attractive but not a real beauty.

Her cheeks were just a shade too full and nothing, she knew, could alter that any more than the most skilful plucking would ever convert her golden eyebrows from semicircular arches to the long narrow Garboish sweeps which she would have liked. Besides, shame of all shames, her otherwise quite perfect figure was marred by thick ankles.

The McKay was not thinking of her ankles, only that she was a darned decent healthy little girl, and a thundering sight more fun to be with than her really beautiful multi-millionairess cousin, Camilla, newly divorced Duchess da Solento-Ragina, nee Hart, who was speeding out to the strange vessel in the bay with a little bodyguard of would-be second husbands.

'Wonder which of 'em will hook her?* the McKay remarked, airing his thoughts aloud. 'If 1 were her I'd pick the Swede—at least he's got some brains.'

'Oh, but Count Axel's so old!' Sally protested.

'Nonsense, he's not much over forty, just the age to deal with a fly-by-night young creature like your lovely cousin. Still she hasn't the sense to see that he's worth three of the Roumanian Prince—or ten of that little filth Master Nicolas Costello.'