A Sequel to "From
the Ocean's Depths"
I read
the telegram for the second time. Then I folded it up, put it in my pocket, and
pressed the little button on my desk. My mind was made up.
"Miss Fentress, I'm leaving this afternoon on
an extended trip. The Florida address will reach me after Thursday. Tell Wade
and Bennett to carry on. I think you have everything in hand? Is everything
clear to you?"
"Yes, Mr.
Taylor." Miss Fentress was not in the least surprised. She was used to my
sudden trips. The outfit got along perfectly without me; sometimes I think my
frequent absences are good for the business. The boys work like the devil to
make a fine showing while I'm away. And Miss Fentress is a perfect gem of a
secretary. I had nothing to worry about there.
"Fine! Will
you get my diggings on the phone?" I hurriedly put my few papers in place,
and signed a couple of letters. Then Josef was on the wire.
"Josef? Pack
my bags right away, will you? For Florida. The usual things.... Yes, right
away. I'll be leaving by noon.... Yes, driving through."
That was that. There were a few more letters to
sign, a few hasty instructions to be given regarding one or two matters that
were hanging fire. Then, on my way to my bachelor apartments, I read the
telegram through again:
THINK IT WORTH
WHILE IF YOU FEEL ADVENTUROUS AND HAVE NOTHING PRESSING TO COME TO THE
MONSTROSITY STOP MAKE YOUR WILL FIRST STOP SHALL LOOK FOR YOU ANY DAY AS I KNOW
YOU ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR EXCITEMENT AND NEVER HAVE ANYTHING IMPORTANT TO DO
SO DON'T BOTHER TO WIRE STOP PERHAPS WE SHALL SEE HER AGAIN
MERCER
I smiled at Mercer's frank opinion of my
disposition and my importance to my business. But I frowned over the admonition
to make my will, and the last telling statement in the wire: "Perhaps we
shall see her again." I knew whom he meant by "her."
Josef had my bags
waiting for me. A few hurried instructions, most of them shouted over my
shoulder, and I was purring down the main drag, my duffel in the rumble, and
the roadster headed due south.
"Perhaps we
shall see her again." Those words from the telegram kept coming before my
eyes. Mercer knew what he was about, if he wanted my company, when he put that
line in his wire.
I have already told the story of our first meeting
with the strange being from the ocean's depths that, wounded and senseless, had
been flung up on the beach near Warren Mercer's Florida estate. In all the
history of civilization, no stranger bit of flotsam had ever been cast up by a
storm.
Neither of us
would ever forget that slim white creature, swathed in her veil of long, light
golden hair, as she crouched on the bottom of Mercer's swimming pool, and
pictured for us, by means of Mercer's thought-telegraph (my own name for the
device; he has a long and scientific title for it with as many joints as a
centipede), the story of her people.
They had lived in
a country of steaming mist, when the world was very young. They had been forced
into the sea to obtain food, and after many generations they had gone back to
the sea as man once emerged from it. They had grown webs on their hands and
feet, and they breathed oxygen dissolved in water, as fishes do, instead of
taking it from the atmosphere. And under the mighty Atlantic, somewhere, were
their villages.
The girl had
pictured all these things for us, and then—nearly a year ago, now—she had
pleaded with us to let her return to her people. And so we had put her back
into the sea, and she had bade us farewell. But just before she disappeared,
she had done a strange thing.
She had pointed, under the water, out towards the
depth, and then, with a broad, sweeping motion of her arm, she had indicated
the shore, as though to promise, it seemed to me, that she intended to return.
And now, Mercer
said, we might see her again! How? Mercer, conservative and scientific, was not
the man to make rash promises. But how...?
The best way to
solve the riddle was to reach Mercer, and I broke the speed laws of five states
three days running.
I did not even
stop at my own little shack. It was only four miles from there to the huge,
rather neglected estate, built in boom times by some newly-rich promoter, and
dubbed by Mercer "The Monstrosity."
Hardly bothering
to slow down, I turned off the concrete onto the long, weed-grown gravel drive,
and shot between the two massive, stuccoed pillars that guarded the drive.
Their corroded bronze plates, bearing the original title of the estate,
"The Billows," were a promise that my long, hard drive was nearly at
an end.
As soon as the huge, rambling structure was fairly
in sight, I pressed the flat of my hand on the horn button. By the time I came
to a locked-wheel halt, with the gravel rattling on my fenders, Mercer was
there to greet me.
"It's ten
o'clock," he grinned as he shook hands. "I'd set noon as the hour of
your arrival. You certainly must have made time, Taylor!"
"I
did!" I nodded rather grimly, recalling one or two narrow squeaks.
"But who wouldn't, with a wire like this?" I produced the crumpled
telegram rather dramatically. "You've got a lot to explain."
"I know
it." Mercer was quite serious now. "Come on in and we'll mix
highballs with the story."
Locked arm in
arm, we entered the house together, and settled ourselves in the huge living
room.
Mercer, I could
see at a glance, was thinner and browner than when we had parted, but
otherwise, he was the same lithe, soft-mannered little scientist I had known
for years; dark-eyed, with an almost beautiful mouth, outlined by a slim,
closely cropped and very black moustache.
"Well,
here's to our lady from the sea," proposed Mercer, when Carson, his man,
had brought the drinks and departed. I nodded, and we both sipped our
highballs.
"Briefly,"
said my friend, "this is the story. You and I know that somewhere beneath
the Atlantic there are a people who went back to whence they came. We have seen
one of those people. I propose that, since they cannot come to us, we go to
them. I have made preparations to go to them, and I wanted you to have the
opportunity of going with me, if you wish."
"But how,
Mercer? And what—"
He interrupted with a quick, nervous gesture.
"I'll show
you, presently. I believe it can be done. It will be a dangerous adventure,
though; I was not joking when I advised you to make your will. An uncertain
venture, too. But, I believe, most wonderfully worth while." His eyes were
shining now with all the enthusiasm of the scientist, the dreamer.
"It sounds
mighty appealing," I said. "But how...."
"Finish your drink and I'll show you."
I downed what was left of my highball in two mighty
gulps.
"Lead me to
it, Mercer!"
He smiled his
quiet smile and led the way to what had been the billiard room of "The
Billows," but which was the laboratory of "The Monstrosity." The
first thing my eyes fell upon were two gleaming metal objects suspended from
chains let into the ceiling.
"Diving
suits," explained Mercer. "Rather different from anything you've ever
seen."
They were different. The body was a perfect globe,
as was the head-piece. The legs were cylindrical, jointed at knee and thigh
with huge discs. The feet were solid metal, curved rocker-like on the bottom,
and at the ends of the arms were three hooked talons, the concave sides of two
talons facing the concave side of the third. The arms were hinged at the elbow
just as the legs were hinged, but there was a huge ball-and-socket joint at the
shoulder.
But Mercer!" I protested. "No human being
could even stand up with that weight of metal on and around him!"
"You're
mistaken, Taylor," smiled Mercer. "That is not solid metal, you see.
And it is an aluminum alloy that is not nearly as heavy as it looks. There are
two walls, slightly over an inch apart, braced by innumerable trusses. The
fabric is nearly as strong as that much solid metal, and infinitely lighter.
They work all right, Taylor. I know, because I've tried them."
"And this
hump on the back?" I asked, walking around the odd, dangling figures,
hanging like bloated metal skeletons from their chains. I had thought the
bodies were perfect globes; I could see now that at the rear there was a
humplike excrescence across the shoulders.
"Air,"
explained Mercer. "There are two other tanks inside the globular body.
That shape was adopted, by the way, because a globe can withstand more pressure
than any other shape. And we may have to go where pressures are high."
"And so,"
I said, "we don these things and stroll out into the Atlantic looking for
the girl and her friends?"
"Hardly.
They're not quite the apparel for so long a stroll. You haven't seen all the
marvels yet. Come along!"
He led the way through the patio, beside the pool
in which our strange visitor from the depths had lived during her brief stay
with us, and out into the open again. As we neared the sea, I became aware, for
the first time, of a faint, muffled hammering sound, and I glanced at Mercer
inquiringly.
"Just a
second," he smiled. "Then—there she is, Taylor!"
I stood still and
stared. In a little cove, cradled in a cunning, spidery structure of wood, a
submarine rested upon the ways.
"Good
Lord!" I exclaimed. "You're going into this right, Mercer!"
"Yes.
Because I think it's immensely worth while. But come along and let me show you
the Santa Maria—named after the flagship of Columbus' little fleet. Come
on!"
Two men with army
automatics strapped significantly to their belts nodded courteously as we came
up. They were the only men in sight, but from the hammering going on inside
there must have been quite a sizeable crew busy in the interior. A couple of
raw pine shacks, some little distance away, provided quarters for, I judged,
twenty or thirty men.
"Had her
shipped down in pieces," explained Mercer. "The boat that brought it
lay to off shore and we lightered the parts ashore. A tremendous job. But
she'll be ready for the water in a week; ten days at the latest."
"You're a
wonder," I said, and I meant it.
Mercer patted the red-leaded side of the submarine
affectionately. "Later," he said, "I'll take you inside, but
they're busy as the devil in there, and the sound of the hammers fairly makes
your head ring. You'll see it all later, anyway—if you feel you'd like to share
the adventure with me?"
"Listen,"
I grinned as we turned back towards the house, "it'll take more than those
two lads with the pop-guns to keep me out of the Santa Maria when she sails—or
dives, or whatever it is she's supposed to do!"
Mercer laughed
softly, and we walked the rest of the way in silence. I imagine we were both
pretty busy with our thoughts; I know that I was. And several times, as we
walked along, I looked back over my shoulder towards the ungainly red monster
straddling on her spindling wooden legs—and towards the smiling Atlantic,
glistening serenely in the sun.
Mercer was so busy with a thousand and one details
that I found myself very much in the way if I followed him around, so I decided
to loaf.
For weeks after
we had put our strange girl visitor back into the sea from whence Mercer had
taken her, I had watched from a comfortable seat well above the high-water mark
that commanded that section of shore. For I had felt sure by that last strange
gesture of hers that she meant to return.
I located my old
seat, and I found that it had been used a great deal since I had left it. There
were whole winnows of cigarette butts, some of them quite fresh, all around.
Mercer, cold-blooded scientist as he was, had hoped against hope that she would
return too.
It was a very
comfortable seat, in the shade of a little cluster of palms, and for the next
several days I spent most of my time there, reading and smoking—and watching.
No matter how interesting the book, I found myself, every few seconds, lifting
my eyes to search the beach and the sea.
I am not sure,
but I think it was the eighth day after my arrival that I looked up and saw,
for the first time, something besides the smiling beach and the ceaseless
procession of incoming rollers. For an instant I doubted what I saw; then, with
a cry that stuck in my throat, I dropped my book unheeded to the sand and raced
towards the shore.
She was there! White and slim, her pale gold hair
clinging to her body and gleaming like polished metal in the sun, she stood for
a moment, while the spray frothed at her thighs. Behind her, crouching below
the surface, I could distinguish two other forms. She had returned, and not
alone!
One long, slim
arm shot out toward me, held level with the shoulder: the well-remembered
gesture of greeting. Then she too crouched below the surface that she might
breathe.
As I ran out onto
the wet sand, the waves splashing around my ankles all unheeded, she rose
again, and now I could see her lovely smile, and her dark, glowing eyes. I was
babbling—I do not know what. Before I could reach her, she smiled and sank
again below the surface.
I waded on out,
laughing excitedly, and as I came close to her, she bobbed up again out of the
spray, and we greeted each other in the manner of her people, hands
outstretched, each gripping the shoulder of the other.
She made a quick
motion then, with both hands, as though she placed a cap upon the shining glory
of her head, and I understood in an instant what she wished: the antenna of
Mercer's thought-telegraph, by the aid of which she had told us the story of
herself and her people.
I nodded and smiled, and pointed to the spot where
she stood, trying to show her by my expression that I understood, and by my
gesture, that she was to wait here for me. She smiled and nodded in return, and
crouched again below the surface of the heaving sea.
As I turned
toward the beach, I caught a momentary glimpse of the two who had come with
her. They were a man and a woman, watching me with wide, half-curious,
half-frightened eyes. I recognized them instantly from the picture she had
impressed upon my mind nearly a year ago. She had brought with her on her
journey her mother and her father.
Stumbling, my
legs shaking with excitement, I ran through the water. With my wet trousers
flapping against my ankles, I sprinted towards the house.
I found Mercer in
the laboratory. He looked up as I came rushing in, wet from the shoulders down,
and I saw his eyes grow suddenly wide.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I was breathless.
And Mercer took the words from my mouth before I could utter them.
"She's come
back!" he cried. "She's come back! Taylor—she has?" He gripped
me, his fingers like steel clamps, shaking me with his amazing strength.
"Yes."
I found my breath and my voice at the same instant. "She's there, just
where we put her into the sea, and there are two others with her—her mother and
her father. Come on, Mercer, and bring your thought gadget!"
"I
can't!" he groaned. "I've built an improvement on it into the diving
armor, and a central instrument on the sub, but the old apparatus is strewn all
over the table, here, just as it was when we used it the other time. We'll have
to bring her here."
"Get a
basin, then!" I said. "We'll carry her back to the pool just as we
took her from it. Hurry!"
And we did just
that. Mercer snatched up a huge glass basin used in his chemistry experiments,
and we raced down to the shore. As well as we could we explained our wishes,
and she smiled her quick smile of understanding. Crouching beneath the water,
she turned to her companions, and I could see her throat move as she spoke to
them. They seemed to protest, dubious and frightened, but in the end she seemed
to reassure them, and we picked her up, swathed in her hair as in a silken
gown, and carried her, her head immersed in the basin of water, that she might
breathe in comfort, to the pool.
It all took but a
few minutes, but it seemed hours. Mercer's hands were shaking as he handed me
the antenna for the girl and another for myself, and his teeth were chattering
as he spoke.
"Hurry,
Taylor!" he said. "I've set the switch so that she can do the
sending, while we receive. Quickly, man!"
I leaped into the pool and adjusted the antenna on
her head, making sure that the four electrodes of the crossed curved members
pressed against the front and back and both sides of her head. Then, hastily, I
climbed out of the pool, seated myself on its edge, and put on my own antenna.
Perhaps I should
say at this time that Mercer's device for conveying thought could do no more
than convey what was in the mind of the person sending. Mercer and I could
convey actual words and sentences, because we understood each other's language,
and by thinking in words, we conveyed our thoughts in words. One received the
impression, almost, of having heard actual speech.
We could not
communicate with the girl in this fashion, however, for we did not understand
her speech. She had to convey her thoughts to us by means of mental pictures
which told her story. And this is the story of her pictures unfolded.
First, in
sketchy, half-formed pictures, I saw her return to the village, of her people;
her welcome there, with curious crowds around her, questioning her. Their
incredulous expressions as she told them of her experience were ludicrous. Her
meeting with her father and mother brought a little catch to my throat, and I
looked across the pool at Mercer. I knew that he, too, was glad that we bad put
her back into the sea when she wished to go.
These pictures faded hastily, and for a moment
there was only the circular swirling as of gray mist; that was the symbol she
adopted to denote the passing of time. Then, slowly, the picture cleared.
It was the same
village I had seen before, with its ragged, warped, narrow streets, and its row
of dome-shaped houses, for all the world like Eskimo igloos, but made of coral
and various forms of vegetation. At the outskirts of the village I could see
the gently moving, shadowy forms of weird submarine growths, and the quick
darting shapes of innumerable fishes.
Some few people
were moving along the streets, walking with oddly springy steps. Others, a
larger number, darted here and there above the roofs, some hovering in the
water as gulls hover in the air, lazily, but the majority apparently on
business or work to be executed with dispatch.
Suddenly, into
the midst of this peaceful scene, three figures came darting. They were not
like the people of the village, for they were smaller, and instead of being
gracefully slim they were short and powerful in build. They were not white like
the people of the girl's village, but swarthy, and they were dressed in a sort
of tight-fitting shirt of gleaming leather—shark-skin, I learned later. They
carried, tucked through a sort of belt made of twisted vegetation, two long,
slim knives of pointed stone or bone.
But it was not until they seemed to come close to
me that I saw the great point of difference. Their faces were scarcely human.
The nose had become rudimentary, leaving a large, blank expanse in the middle
of their faces that gave them a peculiarly hideous expression. Their eyes were
almost perfectly round, and very fierce, and their mouths huge and fishlike.
Beneath their sharp, jutting jaws, between the angle of the jaws and a spot
beneath the ears, were huge, longitudinal slits, that intermittently showed
blood-red, like fresh gashes cut in the sides of their throats. I could see
even the hard, bony cover that protected these slits, and I realized that these
were gills! Here were representatives of a people that had gone back to the sea
ages before the people of the girl's village.
Their coming
caused a sort of panic in the village, and the three noseless creatures strode
down the principal street grinning hugely, glancing from right to left, and
showing their sharp pointed teeth. They looked more like sharks than like human
beings.
A committee of
five gray old men met the visitors, and conducted them into one of the larger
houses. Insolently, the leader of the three shark-faced creatures made demands,
and the scene changed swiftly to make clear the nature of those demands.
The village was to give a number of its finest
young men and women to the shark-faced people; about fifty of each sex, I
gathered, to be servants, slaves, to the noseless ones.
The scene shifted
quickly to the interior of the house. The old men were shaking their heads,
protesting, explaining. There was fear on their faces, but there was
determination, too.
One of the three
envoys snarled and came closer to the five old men, lifting a knife
threateningly. I thought for an instant that he was about to strike down one of
the villagers; then the picture dissolved into another, and I saw that he was
but threatening them with what he could cause to happen.
The fate of the
village and the villagers, were the demands of the three refused, was a
terrible one. Hordes of the noseless creatures came swarming. They tore the
houses apart, and with their long, slim white weapons they killed the old men
and women, and the children. The villagers fought desperately, but they were
outnumbered. The shark-skin kirtles of the invaders turned their knives like
armor, and the sea grew red with swirling blood that spread like scarlet smoke
through the water. Then, this too faded, and I saw the old men cowering,
pleading with the three terrible envoys.
The leader of the
three shark-faced creatures spoke again. He would give them time—a short
revolving swirl of gray that indicated only a brief time, apparently—and return
for an answer. Grinning evilly, the three turned away, left the dome-shaped
house, and darted away over the roofs of the village into the dim darkness of
the distant waters.
I saw the girl, then, talking to the elders. They
smiled sadly, and shook their heads hopelessly. She argued with them earnestly,
painting a picture for them: Mercer and myself, as she viewed us, tall and very
strong and with great wisdom in our faces. We too walked along the streets of
the village. The hordes of shark-faced ones came, like a swarm of monstrous
sharks, and—the picture was very vague and nebulous, now—we put them to rout.
She wished us to
help her, she had convinced the elders that we could. She, her mother and
father, started out from the village. Three times they had fought with sharks,
and each time they had killed them. They had found the shore, the very spot
where we had put her back into the sea. Then there was a momentary flash of the
picture she had called up, of Mercer and I putting the shark-faced hordes to
rout, and then, startlingly, I was conscious of that high, pleading sound—the
sound that I had heard once before, when she had begged us to return her to her
people.
The sound that I
knew was her word for "Please!"
There was a
little click. Mercer had turned the switch. He would transmit now; she and I
would listen.
In the center of the village—how vaguely and
clumsily he pictured it!—rested the Santa Maria. From a trap in the bottom two
bulging, gleaming figures emerged. Rushing up, a glimpse through the
face-plates revealed Mercer and myself. The shark-faced hordes descended, and
Mercer waved something, something like a huge bottle, towards them. None of the
villagers were in sight.
The noseless ones
swooped down on us fearlessly, knives drawn, pointed teeth revealed in fiendish
grins. But they did not reach us. By dozens, by scores, they went limp and
floated slowly to the floor of the ocean. Their bodies covered the streets,
they sprawled across the roofs of the houses. And in a few seconds there was
not one alive of all the hundreds who had come!
I looked down at
the girl. She was smiling up at me through the clear water, and once again I
felt the strange, strong tug at my heart-strings. Her great dark eyes glowed
with a perfect confidence, a supreme faith.
We had made her a
promise.
I wondered if it
would be possible to keep it.
In the day following, the Santa Maria was launched.
Two days later, trial trips and final adjustments completed, we submerged for
the great adventure.
It sounds very
simple when recorded thus in a few brief lines. It was not, however, such a
simple matter. Those three days were full of hectic activity. Mercer and I did
not sleep more than four hours any of those three nights.
We were too busy
to talk. Mercer worked frantically in his laboratory, slaving feverishly beside
the big hood. I overlooked the tests of the submarine and the loading of the
necessary supplies.
The girl we had
taken back to her parents, giving her to understand that she was to wait. They
went away, but every few hours returned, as though to urge us to greater haste.
And at last we were ready, and the girl and her two companions seated
themselves on the tiny deck of the Santa Maria, just forward of the conning
tower, holding themselves in place by the chains. We had already instructed the
girl in her duties: we would move slowly, and she should guide us, by pointing
either to the right or the left.
I will confess I gave a last long, lingering look
at the shore before the hatch of the conning tower was clamped down. I was not
exactly afraid, but I wondered if I would ever step foot on solid land again.
Standing in the
conning tower beside Mercer, I watched the sea rise at an angle to meet us, and
I dodged instinctively as the first green wave pelted against the thick
porthole through which I was looking. An instant later the water closed over
the top of the conning tower, and at a gentle angle we nosed towards the bottom
of the sea.
An account of the
trip itself, perhaps, does not belong in this record. It was not a pleasant
adventure in itself, for the Santa Maria, like every undersea craft, I suppose,
was close, smelly, and cramped. We proceeded very slowly, for only by so doing
could our guide keep her bearings, and how she found the way was a mystery to
all of us. We could see but very little, despite the clearness of the water.
It was by no
means a sight-seeing trip. For various reasons, Mercer had cut our crew to the
minimum. We had two navigating officers, experienced submarine men both, and
five sailors, also experienced in undersea work. With such a short crew, Mercer
and I were both kept busy.
Bonnett, the captain, was a tall, dark chap,
stooped from years in the low, cramped quarters of submarines. Duke, our
second-officer, was a youngster hardly out of his 'teens, and as clever as they
come. And although both of them, and the crew as well, must have been agog with
questions, neither by word nor look did they express their feelings. Mercer had
paid for obedience without curiosity, and he got it.
We spent the
first night on the bottom, for the simple reason that had we come to the
surface, we might have come down into territory unfamiliar to our guide. As
soon as the first faint light began to filter down, however, we proceeded, and
Mercer and I crowded together into the conning tower.
"We're
close," said Mercer. "See how excited they are, all three of
them."
The three strange
creatures were holding onto the chains and staring over the bulging side of the
ship. Every few seconds the girl turned and looked back at us, smiling, her
eyes shining with excitement. Suddenly she pointed straight down, and held out
her arm in unmistakable gesture. We were to stop.
Mercer conveyed the order instantly to Bonnett at
the controls, and all three of our guides dived gracefully off the ship and
disappeared into the depths below.
"Let her
settle to the bottom, Bonnett," ordered Mercer. "Slowly ...
slowly...."
Bonnett handled
the ship neatly, keeping her nicely trimmed. We came to rest on the bottom in
four or five seconds, and as Mercer and I stared out eagerly through the round
glass ports of the conning tower, we could see, very dimly, a cluster of dark,
rounded projections cropping out from the bed of the ocean. We were only a few
yards from the edge of the girl's village.
The scene was
exactly as we had pictured it, save that it was not nearly as clear and well
lighted. I realized that our eyes were not accustomed to the gloom, as were
those of the girl and her people, but I could distinguish the vague outlines of
the houses, and the slowly swaying shapes of monstrous growths.
"Well,
Taylor," said Mercer, his voice shaking with excitement, "here we
are! And here"—peering out through the glass-covered port again—"are
her people!"
The whole village was swarming around us. White
bodies hovered around us as moths around a light. Faces pressed against the
ports and stared in at us with great, amazed eyes.
Then, suddenly
the crowd of curious creatures parted, and the girl came darting up with the
five ancients she had showed us before. They were evidently the council
responsible for the government of the village, or something of the sort, for
the other villagers bowed their heads respectfully as they passed.
The girl came
close to the port through which I was looking, and gestured earnestly. Her face
was tense and anxious, and from time to time she glanced over her shoulder, as
though she feared the coming of an enemy.
"Our time's
short, I take it, if we are to be of service," said Mercer. "Come on,
Taylor; into the diving suits!"
I signaled the
girl that we understood, and would hurry. Then I followed Mercer into our tiny
stateroom.
"Remember
what I've told you," he said, as we slipped into the heavy woolen
undergarments we were to wear inside the suits. "You understand how to
handle your air, I believe, and you'll have no difficulty getting around in the
suit if you'll just remember to go slowly. Your job is to get the whole village
to get away when the enemy is sighted. Get them to come this way from the
village, towards the ship, understand. The current comes from this direction;
the way the vegetation bends shows that. And keep the girl's people away until
I signal you to let them return. And remember to take your electric lantern.
Don't burn it more than is necessary; the batteries are not large and the bulb
draws a lot of current. Ready?"
I was, but I was shaking a little as the men helped
me into the mighty armor that was to keep the pressure of several atmospheres
from crushing my body. The helmet was the last piece to be donned; when it was
screwed in place I stood there like a mummy, almost completely rigid.
Quickly we were
put into the air lock, together with a large iron box containing a number of
things Mercer needed. Darkness and water rushed in on us. The water closed over
my head. I became aware of the soft, continuous popping sounds of the
air-bubbles escaping from the relief valve of the head-piece.
For a moment I
was dizzy and more than a little nauseated. I could feel the cold sweat
pricking my forehead. Then there was a sudden glow of light from before me, and
I started walking towards it. I found I could walk now; not easily, but, after
I caught the trick of it, without much difficulty. I could move my arms, too,
and the interlocking hooks that served me for fingers. When my real fingers
closed upon a little cross-bar at the end of the armored arms, and pulled the
bars towards me, the steel claws outside came together, like a thumb and two
fingers.
In a moment we stood upon the bottom of the ocean.
I turned my head inside the helmet, and there, beside me, was the sleek, smooth
side of the Santa Maria. On my other side was Mercer, a huge, dim figure in his
diving armor. He made an awkward gesture towards his head, and I suddenly
remembered something.
Before me, where
I could operate it with a thrusting movement of my chin, was a toggle switch. I
snapped it over, and heard Mercer's voice: "—n't forget everything I tell
him."
"I know
it," I said mentally to him. "I was rather rattled. O.K. now,
however. Anything I can do?"
"Yes. Help
me with this box, and then get the girl to put on the antenna you'll find
there. Don't forget the knife and the light."
"Right!"
I bent over the box with him, and we both came near falling. We opened the lid,
however, and I hooked the knife and the light into their proper places outside
my armor. Then, with the antenna for the girl, so that we could establish
connections with her, and through her, with the villagers, I moved off.
This antenna was
entirely different from the one used in previous experiments. The four
cross-members that clasped the head were finer, and at their junction was a
flat black circular box, from which rose a black rod some six inches in height,
and topped by a black sphere half the size of my fist.
These perfected thought-telegraphs (I shall
continue to use my own designation for them, as clearer and more understandable
than Mercer's) did not need connecting wires; they conveyed their impulses by
Hertzian waves to a master receiver on the Santa Maria, which amplified them
and re-broadcast them so that each of us could both send and receive at any
time.
As I turned, I
found the girl beside me, waiting anxiously. Behind her were the five ancients.
I slipped the antenna over her head, and instantly she began telling me that
danger was imminent.
To facilitate
matters, I shall describe her messages as though she spoke; indeed, her
pictures were as clear, almost, as speech in my native tongue. And at times she
did use certain sound-words; it was in this way that I learned, by inference,
that her name was Imee, that her people were called Teemorn (this may have been
the name of the community, or perhaps it was interchangeable—I am not sure) and
that the shark-faced people were the Rorn.
"The Rorn
come!" she said quickly. "Two days past, the three came again, and
our old men refused to give up the slaves. Today they will return, these Rorn,
and my people, the Teemorn will all be made dead!"
Then I told her what Mercer had said: that she and
every one of her people must flee swiftly and hide, beyond the boat, a distance
beyond the village. Mercer and I would wait here, and when the Rorn came, it
was they who would be made dead, as we had promised. Although how, I admitted
to myself, being careful to hide the thought that she might not sense it, I
didn't know. We had been too busy since the girl's arrival to go into details.
She turned and
spoke quickly to the old men. They looked at me doubtfully, and she urged them
vehemently. They turned back towards the village, and in a moment the Teemorn
were stalking by obediently, losing their slim white forms in the gloom behind
the dim bulk of the Santa Maria, resting so quietly on the sand.
They were hardly
out of sight when suddenly Mercer spoke through the antenna fitted inside my
helmet.
"They're
coming!" he cried. "Look above and to your right! The Rorn, as Imee
calls them, have arrived!"
I looked up and
beheld a hundred—no, a thousand!—shadowy forms darting down on the village,
upon us. They, too, were just as the girl had pictured them: short, swart
beings with but the suggestion of a nose, and with pulsing gill-covers under
the angles of their jaws. Each one gripped a long, slim white knife in either
hand, and their tight-fitting shark-skin armor gleamed darkly as they swooped
down upon us.
Eagerly I watched my friend. In the clasping talons
of his left hand he held a long, slim flask that glinted even in that dim,
confusing twilight. Two others, mates to the first, dangled at his waist.
Lifting it high above his head, he swung his metal-clad right arm, and
shattered the flask he held in his taloned left hand.
For an instant
nothing happened, save that flittering bits of broken glass shimmered their way
to the sand. Then the horde of noseless ones seemed to dissolve, as hundreds of
limp and sprawling bodies sank to the sand. Perhaps a half of that great
multitude seemed struck dead.
"Hydrocyanic
acid, Taylor!" cried Mercer exultantly. "Even diluted by the sea
water, it kills almost instantly. Go back and make sure that none of the girl's
people come back before the current has washed this away, or they'll go in the
same fashion. Warn her to keep them back!"
I hurried toward the Santa Maria, thinking urgent
warnings for Imee's benefit. "Stay back! Stay back, Imee! The Rorn are
falling to the sand, we have made many of them dead, but the danger for you and
your people is still here. Stay back!"
"Truly, do
the Rorn become dead? I would like to see that with my own eyes. Be careful
that they do not make you dead also, and your friend, for they have large
brains, these Rorn."
"Do not come
to see with your own eyes, or you will be as the Rorn!" I hurried around
the submarine, to keep her back by force, if that were necessary. "You
must—"
"Help,
Taylor!" cut in a voice—Mercer's. "These devils have got me!"
"Right with
you!" I turned and hurried back as swiftly as I could, stumbling over the
bodies of dead Rorn that had settled everywhere on the clean yellow sand.
I found Mercer in
the grip of six of the shark-faced creatures. They were trying desperately to
stab him, but their knives bent and broke against the metal of his armor. So
busy were they with him that they did not notice me coming up, but finding
their weapons useless, they suddenly snatched him up, one at either arm and
either leg, and two grasping him by the head-piece, and darted away with him,
carrying his bulging metal body between them like a battering ram, while he
kicked and struggled impotently.
"They are
taking him to the Place of Darkness!" cried Imee suddenly, having read my
impressions of the scene. "Oh, go quickly, quickly, toward the direction
of your best hand—to your right! I shall follow!"
"No! No!
Stay back!" I warned her frantically. All but these six Rorn had fallen
victims of Mercer's hellish poison, and while they seemed to be suffering no
ill effects, I thought it more than likely that some sly current might bring
the deadly poison to the girl, did she come this way, and kill her as surely as
it had killed these hundreds of Rorn.
To the right, she had said. Towards the Place of
Darkness. I hurried out of the village in the direction she indicated, towards
the distant gleam of Mercer's armor, rapidly being lost in the gloom.
"I'm coming,
Mercer!" I called to him. "Delay them as much as you can. You're
going faster than I can."
"I can't
help myself much," replied Mercer. "Doing what I can. Strong—they're
devilish strong, Taylor. And, at close range, I can see you were right. They have
true gill-covers; their noses are rudimentary and—"
"The devil
take your scientific observations! Drag! Slow them down. I'm losing sight of
you. For heaven's sake, drag!"
"I'm doing
what I can. Damn you, if I could only get a hand free—" I realized that
this last was directed at his captors, and plunged on.
Huge, monstrous growths swirled around me like
living things. My feet crunched on shelled things, and sank into soft and slimy
creeping things on the bottom. I cursed the water that held me back so gently
yet so firmly; I cursed the armor that made it so hard for me to move my legs.
But I kept on, and at last I began to gain on them; I could see them quite
distinctly, bending over Mercer, working on him....
"Do your
best, Taylor," urged Mercer desperately. "We're on the edge of a sort
of cliff; a fault in the structure of the ocean bed. They're tying me with
strong cords of leather. Tying a huge stone to my body. I think they—" I
had a momentary flash of the scene as Mercer saw it at that instant: the horrid
noseless face close to his, the swart bodies moving with amazing agility. And
at his very feet, a yawning precipice, holding nothing but darkness, leading
down and down into nothingness.
"Run
quickly!" It was Imee. She, too, had seen what I had seen. "That is
the Place of Darkness, where we take those whom the Five deem worthy of the
Last Punishment. They will tie the stone to him, and bear him out above the
Blackness, and then they will let him go! Quickly! Quickly!"
I was almost upon
them now, and one of the six turned and saw me. Three of them darted towards
me, while the others held Mercer flat upon the edge of the precipice. If they
had only realized that by rolling his armored body a foot or two, he would sink
... without the stone.... But they did not. Their brains had little reasoning
power, apparently. The attaching of a stone was necessary, in their experience;
it was necessary now.
With my left hand I unhooked my light; I already
gripped my knife in my right hand. Swinging the light sharply against my leg, I
struck the toggle-switch, and a beam of intense brilliancy shot through the
gloom. It aided me, as I had thought it would; it blinded these large-eyed
denizens of the deep.
Swiftly I struck
out with the knife. It hacked harmlessly into the shark-skin garment of one of
the men, and I stabbed out again. Two of the men leaped for my right arm, but
the knife found, this time, the throat of the third. My beam of light showed
palely red, for a moment, and the body of the Rorn toppled slowly to the bed of
the ocean.
The two
shark-faced creatures were hammering at me with their fists, dragging at my
arms and legs, but I plunged on desperately towards Mercer. Myriads of fish,
all shapes and colors and sizes, attracted by the light, swarmed around us.
"Good
boy!" Mercer commended. "See if you can break this last flask of
acid, here at my waist. See—"
With a last desperate plunge, fairly dragging the
two Rorn who tugged at me, I fell forward. With the clenched steel talons of my
right hand, I struck at the silvery flask I could see dangling from Mercer's
waist. I hit it, but only a glancing blow; the flask did not shatter.
"Again!"
commanded Mercer. "It's heavy annealed glass—hydrocyanic acid—terrible
stuff—even the fumes—"
I paid but slight
heed. The two Rorn dragged me back, but I managed to crawl forward on my knees,
and with all my strength, I struck at the flask again.
This time it
shattered, and I lay where I fell, sobbing with weakness, looking out through
the side window of my head-piece.
The five Rorn
seemed to suddenly lose their strength. They struggled limply for a moment, and
then floated down to the waiting sand beneath us.
"Finish,"
remarked Mercer coolly. "And just in time. Let's see if we can find our
way back to the Santa Maria."
We were weary, and we plodded along slowly, twin
trails of air-bubbles like plumes waving behind us, rushing upwards to the
surface. I felt strangely alone at the moment, isolated, cut off from all
mankind, on the bottom of the Atlantic.
"Coming to
meet you, all of us," Imee signaled us. "Be careful where you step,
so that you do not walk in a circle and find again the Place of Darkness. It is
very large."
"Probably
some uncharted deep," threw in Mercer. "Only the larger ones have
been located."
For my part, I
was too weary to think. I just staggered on.
A crowd of slim,
darting white shapes surrounded us. They swam before us, showing the way. The
five patriarchs walked majestically before us; and between us, smiling at us
through the thick lenses of our headpieces, walked Imee. Oh, it was a triumphal
procession, and had I been less weary, I presume I would have felt quite the
hero.
Imee pictured for us, as we went along, the
happiness, the gratefulness of her people. Already, she informed us, great
numbers of young men were clearing away the bodies of the dead Rorn. She was so
happy she could hardly restrain herself.
A dim skeleton
shape bulked up at my left. I turned to look at it, and Imee, watching me
through the lights of my head-piece, nodded and smiled.
Yes, this was the
very hulk by which she had been swimming when the shark had attacked her, the
shark which had been the cause of the accident. She darted on to show me the
very rib upon which her head had struck, stunning her so that she had drifted,
unconscious and storm-tossed, to the shore of Mercer's estate.
I studied the
wreck. It was battered and tilted on its beam ends, but I could still make out
the high poop that marked it as a very old ship.
"A Spanish
galleon, Mercer," I conjectured.
"I believe
so." And then, in pictured form, for Imee's benefit, "It has been
here while much time passed?"
"Yes."
Imee came darting back to us, smiling. "Since before the Teemorn, my
people were here. A Rorn we made prisoner once told us his people discovered it
first. They went into this strange skeleton, and inside were many blocks of
very bright stone." She pictured quite clearly bars of dully-glinting
bullion. Evidently the captive had told his story well.
These stones, which were so bright, the Rorn took
to their city, which is three swims distant." How far that might be, I
could not even guess. A swim, it seemed, was the distance a Teemorn could
travel before the need for rest became imperative. "There were many Rorn,
and they each took one stone. And of them, they made a house for their leader."
The leader, as she pictured him, being the most hideous travesty of a thing in
semi-human form that the mind could imagine: incredibly old and wrinkled and
ugly and gray, his noseless face seamed with cunning, his eyes red rimmed and
terrible, his teeth gleaming, white and sharp, like fangs.
"A whole
house, except the roof," she went on. "It is there now, and it is
gazed at with much admiration by all the Rorn. All this our prisoner told us
before we took him, with a rock made fast to him, out over the Place of
Darkness. He, too, was very proud of their leader's house."
"Treasure!"
I commented to Mercer. "If we could find the city of the Rorn, we might
make the trip pay for itself!"
I could sense his
wave of amusement.
"I
think," he replied, "I'd rather stand it myself. These Rorn don't
appeal to me."
It was over half
an hour before we were at last free of our diving suits.
The first thing
Captain Bonnett said:
"We've got
to get to the surface, and that quickly. Our air supply is running damnably
low. By the time we blow out the tanks we'll be just about out. And foul air
will keep us here until we rot. I'm sorry, sir, but that's the way matters
stand."
Mercer, white-faced and ill, stared at him dazedly.
"Air?"
he repeated groggily—I knew just how he felt—"We should have lots of air.
The specifications—"
"But we're
dealing with facts, not specifications, sir," said Captain Bonnett.
"Another two hours here and we won't leave ever."
"Then it
can't be helped, Captain," muttered Mercer. "We'll go up. And back.
For more compressed air. We must remember to plot our course exactly. You kept
the record on the way out as I instructed you?"
"Yes,
sir," said Captain Bonnett.
"Just a
minute, then," said Mercer.
Weakly he made
his way forward to the little cubbyhole in which was housed the central station
of his thought-telegraph. I didn't even inspect the gleaming maze of apparatus.
I merely watched him dully as he plugged in an antenna similar to the one we
had left with Imee, and adjusted the things on his head.
His eyes brightened instantly. "She's still
wearing her antenna," he said swiftly over his shoulder. "I'll tell
her that something's happened; we must leave, but that we will return."
He sat there,
frowning intently for a moment, and then dragged the antenna wearily from his
head. He touched a switch somewhere, and several softly glowing bulbs turned
slowly red and then dark.
"You and
I," he groaned, "had better go to bed. We overdid it. She
understands, I think. Terribly sorry, terribly disappointed. Some sort of
celebration planned, I gather. Captain Bonnett!"
"Yes,
sir?"
"You may
proceed now as you think best," said Mercer. "We're retiring. Be sure
and chart the course back, so we may locate this spot again."
"Yes,
sir!" said Captain Bonnett.
When I awoke we were at anchor, our deck barely
awash, before the deserted beach of Mercer's estate. Still feeling none too
well, Mercer and I made our way to the narrow deck.
Captain Bonnett
was waiting for us, spruce in his blue uniform, his shoulders bowed as always.
"Good
morning, gentlemen," he offered, smiling crisply. "The open air seems
good, doesn't it?"
It did. There was
a fresh breeze blowing in from the Atlantic, and I filled my lungs gratefully.
I had not realized until that instant just how foul the air below had been.
"Very fine,
Captain," said Mercer, nodding. "You have signaled the men on shore
to send out a boat to take us off?"
"Yes, sir; I
believe they're launching her now."
"And the
chart of our course—did the return trip check with the other?"
"Perfectly,
sir." Captain Bonnett reached in an inner pocket of his double-breasted
coat, extracted two folded pages, and extended them, with a little bow, to
Mercer.
Just as Mercer's
eager fingers touched the precious papers, however, the wind whisked them from
Bonnett's grasp and whirled them into the water.
Bonnett gasped
and gazed after them for a split second; then, barely pausing to tear off his
coat, he plunged over the side.
He tried desperately, but before he could reach
either one of the tossing white specks, they were washed beneath the surface
and disappeared. Ten minutes later, his uniform bedraggled and shapeless, he
pulled himself on deck.
"I'm sorry,
sir," he gasped, out of breath. "Sorrier than I can say. I
tried—"
Mercer,
white-faced and struggling with his emotions, looked down and turned away.
"You don't
remember the bearings, I suppose?" he ventured tonelessly.
"I'm
sorry—no."
"Thank you,
Captain, for trying so hard to recover the papers," said Mercer.
"You'd better change at once; the wind is sharp."
The captain bowed and disappeared down the conning
tower. Then Mercer turned to me, and a smile struggled for life.
"Well,
Taylor, we helped her out, anyway," he said slowly. "I'm sorry
that—that Imee will misunderstand when we don't come back."
"But,
Mercer," I said swiftly, "perhaps we'll be able to find our way back
to her. You thought before, you know, that—"
"But I can
see now what an utterly wild-goose chase it would have been." Mercer shook
his head slowly. "No, old friend, it would be impossible. And—Imee will
not come again to guide us; she will think we have deserted her. And"—he
smiled slowly up into my eyes—"perhaps it is as well. After all, the
photographs and the data I wanted would do the world no practical good. We did
Imee and her people a good turn; let's content ourselves with that. I, for one,
am satisfied."
"And I, old
timer," I said, placing my hand affectionately upon his shoulder.
"Here's the boat. Shall we go ashore?"
We did go ashore,
silently. And as we got out of the boat, and set foot again upon the sand, we
both turned and looked out across the smiling Atlantic, dancing brightly in the
sun.
The mighty,
mysterious Atlantic—home of Imee and her people!
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