The Sea Horror
By Edmond Hamilton
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales May, March 1929.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It is only now, when we know all the story, that we see at last how
narrow was our escape, that we understand at last the power and the
dread of that dark horror that rose to whelm an unsuspecting world.
From the first sailing of the Clinton expedition to that last flaming
hour of tremendous combat when the destiny of a planet was settled
forever, we can follow the thing now, and can recognize what vast
and unseen forces they were that wove around our world the net of a
terrible doom. For it is only now, when the horror has passed over us,
that we can understand that horror from its beginning.
It is with Clinton himself that the beginning lies, and with the
expedition which bore his name. Dr. Herbert Clinton, holder of the
chair of marine zoology at the University of London, was generally
conceded to be the foremost expert on deep-sea life in all the British
Isles. For a score of years, indeed, his fame had risen steadily as a
result of his additions to scientific knowledge. He had been the one
to prove first the connection between the absence of ultra-violet rays
and the strange phosphorescence of certain forms of bathic life. He
had, in his famous Indian Ocean trawlings, established the significance
of the quantities of foraminiferal ooze found on the scarps of that
sea's bottom. And he it was who had annihilated for all time the
long-disputed Kempner-Stoll theory by his brilliant new classification
of ascidian forms.
Even to the general public the slender, gray-haired scientist with
the keen gray eyes was a well-known figure, for it was his famous
investigations into the forms of deep-sea creatures which had made
possible the building of the new K-type submarines. These submarines,
which had now been adopted by practically all nations, were built upon
a new pressure-resistance principle evolved by Dr. Clinton from his
investigations, and could venture to depths and pressures impossible to
the under-sea boats of war and post-war types. Some of them, indeed,
had descended to depths of a mile and more without experiencing injury,
and it was Clinton's contention that they were in reality capable of
depths of three miles and more. To many, at first, that contention
seemed only a somewhat boastful exaggeration on his part, but when the
announcement of the Clinton expedition made it known that one of these
submarines was to be used by that enterprise, the scientist's sincerity
was conceded.
It was early in December that the expedition was first announced, by
Clinton himself, from the University of London offices. He had long
desired, he stated, to investigate the peculiar forms of deep-sea
life to be found in the great Nelsen Deeps. These deeps, lying in the
Atlantic almost half-way between Ireland and Newfoundland, had been but
little explored by oceanographers, due to their great extent and depth,
the latter averaging somewhat more than three miles. Trawls used over
these great deeps could accomplish but little, but they had brought up
some curious variations of common bathic forms, and in one case had
brought up an extraordinary portion of a skeleton, or reticulation
of bones, that was quite unlike that of any deep-sea form known to
zoologists. It was Clinton's hope, therefore, that a more thorough
exploration of these great deeps might reveal forms as yet unknown to
science, and for such an exploration he planned to use, he announced,
one of the new K-type submarines which he himself had helped to design,
and one of which had been specially equipped and placed at his disposal
by a grateful Admiralty Board.
The submarine provided, the _K-16_, had a cruising radius which made
a mother-ship unnecessary, and was large enough to contain all of
the necessary trawling apparatus, storage-tanks and laboratories, as
well as the expedition's personnel. The members of the latter, it
was announced, would be drawn almost entirely from the university's
own scientific faculty, including besides Dr. Clinton, Dr. Randall
Lewis, an expert on ichthyological and conchological forms; Professor
Ernest Stevens, a young instructor of biology and friend of Clinton's;
two laboratory technicians from the university's laboratories; and a
half-dozen assistants, such as photographers, experienced trawlers, and
the like.
It was Clinton's plan to proceed from London directly toward the
northern boundary of the Nelsen Deeps, at an approximate latitude of
57° north, and from there work his way down to their lower boundary
six hundred miles to the south, making free use of the submarine's
trawls, and descending for detailed investigations at any promising
spot; since, as he stated, his calculations showed the submarine to be
easily capable of reaching the three-mile depth. Besides its regulation
torpedo tubes and deck-guns, the _K-16_ had been equipped with powerful
under-sea searchlights capable of dispelling the darkness of the lower
depths, while small port-holes of immensely thick reinforced glass
had been set in the sides of its control room, as in all the new-type
submarines, making a survey of the surrounding waters possible.
Communication with the expedition's headquarters at London was assured
by its powerful radio apparatus. It was Clinton's hope, therefore,
that by making use of all this equipment an extensive and yet thorough
exploration of the great deeps could be carried out in a comparatively
short time.
Late in April, therefore, the long, glistening steel submarine
swept down the Thames and out to the open sea, with the members of
the expedition and two or three of its naval crew grouped on its
low-railed deck. At the last moment the expedition's limited personnel
had been limited still further by the loss of Ernest Stevens, the young
biology instructor who was to have been of it. Young Stevens, on the
day before that of sailing, had had the misfortune to twist his ankle
badly as he ran down the steps of one of the university buildings, and
as the crowded submarine was obviously no place for a disabled man, he
was forced to watch it sail without him, contenting himself, during
the following days, by following the expedition's progress through the
radio reports received from it by the university station.
* * * * *
For the first few days, while the _K-16_ crept out of the English
Channel and into the broad Atlantic, the messages from it were for the
main part but routine reports of progress. The submarine was following
a northwestern course toward the upper boundary of the Nelsen Deeps,
and would, Clinton reported, begin its surveys at once upon reaching
that objective. For several days thereafter the _K-16's_ messages to
the university station at London gave only its position and progress,
and it was not until May 5th that a brief report from the submarine
stated that it had reached the desired latitude and was now forging
slowly southward on the surface, the expedition's members already busy
with their trawls and deck-winches.
For the next three days the messages from the _K-16_ were reports
of the work accomplished with the trawls. In those days, so Clinton
reported, no less than a dozen new forms had already been brought up
and classified. An entirely new species of the _Modiola vulgaris_
was, he stated, probably the most important of their finds so far,
but besides this a half-dozen variations of common malacopterygii and
acanthopterygii forms had been obtained and examined. The submarine,
Clinton added, was still forging south, working all her trawls, and as
yet no descents had been attempted.
On the next day, the 9th, there came a further message in which Clinton
reported the bringing up of several other notable variations from
classified forms, this time of the dibranchiate and tetrabranchiate
cephalopods. He stressed, in this report, the difficulty experienced
in using the trawls at the great depths over which the submarine was
forging, and added that they had been further hampered by the loss,
on the preceding day, of one of their trawls, which, as he said, "was
lost in a rather puzzling manner which none of us is able to explain."
With this rather ambiguous phrase the message of the 9th concluded,
and on the next day no word whatever from the _K-16_ was received by
the university station. Then, late on the morning of the 11th, there
came that short and enigmatic message which was to make Clinton and his
expedition the center of a sudden storm of speculation and discussion.
The message itself, received just before noon on the 11th, was a quite
coherent one, yet seemed at the same time a quite crazy one. It read:
Either we are all mad, or we have made the greatest discovery ever
made. One of our trawls has brought up a thing so incredible, so
unbelievable, that our minds refuse to credit it though it lies
before our eyes. I will not expose this expedition to the derision
of the world by telling what we have found until we learn more, and
for that reason we are making a descent within the next half-hour
which will tell us all. When you hear from us again we shall either
have made the greatest discovery ever made by men, or shall know
ourselves the victims of some incomprehensible delusion.
CLINTON.
Considering that message, it is hardly surprizing that the world
found it interesting, and that within the next few hours the
newspaper-reading public developed a sudden interest in the scientific
expedition of whose existence it had hardly been aware until then.
Through the afternoon of the 11th, in a hundred radio stations on both
sides of the Atlantic, press-writers and scientists alike crowded into
the little receiving-rooms to wait for the first news from Clinton and
his expedition. And in the university station at London, Stevens and
Clinton's other friends and associates waited tensely for that news.
Through the long afternoon of that long spring day they waited, and the
world waited, but still there came no word. Night fell, but a veil of
silence had dropped upon the submarine, and when morning came it found
Stevens and his friends still waiting in vain by the silent impersonal
instruments. Through all that night the calls of a score of stations to
the submarine had gone unheeded, and when the morning newspapers gave
to the public the first news of the _K-16's_ long silence, they stated
openly that some mishap or disaster must have overtaken the submarine.
Only young Stevens and his friends remained steadfast in their
optimism, and even they began to doubt as the 12th passed and still no
message came. By night it was universally believed that the submarine
had met disaster, and out on the Atlantic a half-dozen steamers were
heading toward the spot where it had last reported its position.
By the morning of the 13th the public was informed through the early
editions that the ships rushing to the submarine's aid had been
unable to find any trace of it whatever, though they had circled
repeatedly over the spot. By that time, too, it was pointed out that
the submarine's air-supply would be getting very low, even if it still
remained intact beneath the surface. The general opinion, though, by
then, was that Clinton in over-confidence had ventured to too great a
depth in the submarine, and that it had been crushed by the terrific
pressure. Even at the university it was tacitly conceded that this
must be the case.
Concerning the strange last message from the _K-16_ there was still
discussion, but even that was capable of more than one explanation.
It was pointed out that Clinton was an ardent zoologist, and that the
discovery of some entirely new form might have caused the exaggerated
language of his message. Stevens, who knew the calm and precise
mentality of his superior rather better than that, would not believe
in such an explanation, but was unable to devise a better one to fit
that sensational last report. It was the general belief, therefore,
that in his excitement over some new discovery Clinton had ordered his
submarine to a depth too great, and had met disaster and death there
beneath the terrific pressure of the waters. Certainly, whatever its
defects, there was no other theory that fitted the known facts so well.
Thus, in a few days, the brief sensation of Clinton and his ill-starred
expedition was disposed of. It was useless, of course, to attempt to
locate or raise the missing submarine at that terrific depth, and
no such suggestion was ever made. Even Stevens and his friends were
forced to admit, as the days went by, that there seemed no further
thing to be done, nothing by which more might be learned of the hapless
expedition's fate. The British and American newspapers combined to
advise caution in over-estimating the capacities of the new-type
submarines, but except for that, save in scientific circles, the
loss of one of the greatest living scientists excited no particular
attention. The world deplored the loss, indeed, but turned the moment
after to consideration of its own affairs. Certainly, as the days and
weeks went by, it never dreamed of the true importance of the strange
sensation that had flamed so briefly from the headlines, nor ever
guessed the existence of the calm and gigantic plans and forces of
which that sensation was but an incident, and which were rising even
then to the destruction of man and all man's world.
2
It was on the fourth day of August, just three months after the passing
of Clinton and his expedition, that the first news of the approaching
terror was given to the world. That first news was in the form of a
dispatch from the government oceanographic station at Portsmouth, in
which it was stated that during the last three days the level of the
sea had risen almost as many feet. Unnaturally high tides had been
lashing the coasts of England and of the world during those days, the
message stated, and a study of them had disclosed the astounding and
unexplainable rise which had taken place. The dispatch added that the
rise was a world-wide and not a local one, since corroborative reports
of it had been received from associated oceanographic stations at New
York, Yokohama, Sydney and Calcutta.
It is not wonderful that that brief first message aroused in the world
of science, and even in the world of everyday, a very intense interest
and curiosity. Published as it was in all the London journals on the
evening of the fourth, and by them transmitted by wire and wireless to
the world at large, it soon eclipsed even the latest atrocious murder
as a theme of general discussion. For if there is one thing considered
constant in this changing world of ours, it is the level of the sea.
All our heights and depths are compared to and computed from it, so
unchanging do we esteem it; since though great tides may come and
go the level of the sea itself seems never to change, so delicately
balanced are the combined processes of evaporation and condensation
which deplete and replenish it. And for this hitherto unchanging
level to rise suddenly for almost three feet, in as many days, was a
phenomenon of intense interest and mystery.
Scientists, indeed, when confronted with accounts of what had taken
place, could only shake their heads in somewhat helpless perplexity.
No ordinary conditions, of course, could account for such a tremendous
and unprecedented rise as this. They ventured the suggestion, though,
that some great subterranean upheaval or earthquake might have forced
up the bed of the ocean in some spot to such a distance as to heighten
the level of the waters. If such an upheaval had taken place in some
central spot, they pointed out, such as the Arctic or Antarctic
regions, it might well have caused such a great rise as this in the
level of all the sea. They were unable, however, to explain the fact
that during the last few weeks no such upheaval or quake whatever had
been recorded by the seismographs of the world.
Unchecked by any positive knowledge as to the thing's cause, therefore,
it could be argued and discussed during the next day or two with zest,
and many and fantastic were the explanations that were advanced. The
great space devoted to it by the newspapers had aroused the public's
fickle interest, and during the next two days the sea and the great
tides which were rolling in from it against the coasts of all the
world became the center of a world-wide interest. In Sussex and in
Anglesey, in Maine and in California, in Korea as in Ceylon, there were
everywhere large groups of interested spectators gathered along cliff
and sea-wall and beach, to watch those great green tides shattering
themselves against the shore, and to speculate idly on the subject of
general interest. In England and the Continent, as well as in America,
special excursion trains were run to many beaches, and the proprietors
of resorts reaped a sudden and unexpected harvest.
It was true that here and there some damage had been done by the rising
of the waters, and by the great, unnatural tides, but it was not of a
magnitude large enough to arouse attention. A row of bathing-machines
wrecked, a road or sea-wall washed away, a beached boat or two swept
out to sea--such events as these could hardly seem important to the
mass of people in comparison to the strange conditions which had caused
them. It was also true that the lot of ships at sea had become suddenly
very arduous, due to the great seas running, and that large numbers of
the smaller boats had been forced to remain in port until the great
tides abated, yet even this made no impression save on that small
portion of the world's population which follows the sea. The larger
part of the public chose, during those two days, to regard this strange
manifestation as a spectacle rather designed for its own entertainment
and interest. On the evening of the second day, though, the 6th, there
came that which suddenly swept away this attitude.
This was the second calm report from the Portsmouth station, given to
the waiting newspapers late on the afternoon of the 6th. Within an hour
it had flashed along the telegraph keys and wires, and had fallen into
type and was leaping from the presses in London, and in New York, too,
and in cities around the whole earth's girdle. And with the publication
of that message the whole matter suddenly lost its lighter aspects,
and the world that had theorized and laughed and joked concerning it
suddenly sobered, and looked up with startled eyes. For the Portsmouth
station's second report stated that the rise already noted had not
stopped but was apparently still continuing at the same steady and
extraordinary rate, having risen some two feet further during the
ensuing two days.
"While this extraordinary rise is purely a temporary one, of course,"
said the report, "it seems advisable that preparations be made for the
evacuation of whatever regions or sections lie at a height of less than
ten feet above the former standard sea-level." It was this calm advice
that sent a sudden chill across the peoples of the earth, so that for
the first time there rose the thought of peril in connection with the
thing. All during the next day, while the day and night slid around the
world in endless alternation, men spoke of the thing with knitted brows
and troubled eyes, and in Edinburgh and Chicago and Honolulu and Bombay
said to each other, as though with a strange new thought, "If this
thing--this rise--keeps on, it's going to be a bad thing, d'ye know?"
It was as though that thought had stridden across the world like some
giant specter of fear, to still with lifted ghostly hand the laughter
which the matter had aroused at first.
But in one spot of earth men neither laughed nor spoke concerning it,
but labored madly to stem the peril which they saw rising swift to
whelm them and theirs. An observer hanging high over Holland on that
fateful 6th would have made out, all along the coasts of that sunken
little land, a desperate and unceasing activity, as of the efforts of
some swarming insects to repair a breach in their tiny fortifications.
For the last few days, indeed, the rising sea had been lashing with
all the power of its tremendous tides against the dikes which alone
protected the sunken little land from the fury of the ocean. Inch by
inch that land had been won from the ocean's power, and walled with the
thick dikes which until now had resisted all the ocean's blows; but
thick as they were their height was not great, and toward their tops
the rising waters had been steadily clawing during the last few days.
As sunset of that day gleamed blood-red in the west the anxious
watchers saw that even the parapets of hastily filled sandbags which
they had placed upon their dikes were giving beneath the thunderous
tides, and shifting and dissolving. Valiantly they labored, as men
will do for their life and land, but before midnight of that night
through a score of great breaches the long-repressed seas were rushing
in upon the little land in ravening, titanic fury, and church bells
were ringing wildly across the countryside and beacon fires blazing
red, while roads and canals were choked with hordes of panic-driven
fugitives fleeing blindly through the darkness from the terror that
leaped upon them from behind. And when at last sunrise gleamed golden
over the body-choked waters and over the flooded meadows and spires
of cities, word had been flashed to the world that more than half of
Holland was under water, its cities buried and populations drowned by
the vast, inrushing floods.
With that word the strained anxiety of the world dissolved suddenly
into stark fear. It was only the most emphatic messages of reassurance
on the part of the newspapers and agencies of public information
that prevented a great panic on that morning. They admitted that the
disaster had occurred, but pointed out that it had been caused by the
breaking of the dikes, as similar disasters had been caused before. No
such thing could occur elsewhere, they stated, and assured the public
that the rise in the sea's level was only temporary, caused by the
subterranean upheaval which had been mentioned by the scientists. Not
only would the rise not continue, they predicted, but it would be seen
when the measurements were made public that evening that a positive
lowering of the waters had taken place.
* * * * *
With such assertions the rising panic of the earth's people was calmed
a little on that morning, but the foreboding of dread to come increased
as the extra editions poured from the presses that day hour-by-hour
chronicles of further disaster. Parts of Lancaster and Norfolk were
already flooded, they learned, their inhabitants fleeing by every road
to higher ground. Louisiana and the lower valley of the Mississippi
were under water, and the basin of the Amazon was a maze of flooded
jungles. Fishing villages on the Chinese and Japanese coasts had been
swept away with great loss of life by the vast tides of the Pacific,
the plantations of lower Malaya had become salt swamps, and along the
coastlines of India and Africa the waves were battering the shore with
terrific fury. Scores of ships at sea were known to have foundered,
sending out despairing calls for help until the last, while others
making for the nearest harbor had been caught by the great tides and
flung against cliffs and shoals to be pounded into unrecognizable
wreckage.
Yet still, through the long hours of that tense day, the authorities
and newspapers combined to allay the rising panic. These conditions
were but temporary, they repeated, could be but temporary. The sea
had risen almost a half-dozen feet during the last few days, due to
certain extraordinary conditions, but it would rise no higher, _could_
rise no higher. When the report from the oceanographic stations came,
that would be seen. Until then they implored the public not to yield
to the excitement of alarmists. So through all that day the peoples of
England, and of America, and of all the world, remained tensely quiet,
waiting, waiting for the word that would either explode their fears or
spell their doom. And at last, late that evening, the word they awaited
came.
"The extraordinary and unprecedented rise of the sea's level," said the
general report issued from the Portsmouth and associated oceanographic
stations, "has not subsided during the last twenty-four hours, but on
the contrary has increased approximately a foot more, indicating that
this rise, whatever may be its cause, is still continuing at the same
rate as when first observed. It is impossible to predict when the rise
will cease, knowing as we do nothing of its cause, and it will be also
impossible to issue further reports from these stations, since the rise
of the waters makes their abandonment necessary. Our only suggestion
is that the world's peoples make their way toward the highest grounds
near them, since it is clearly evident that within a few more days this
continuing rise will result in the flooding of the earth's surface to
an unpredictable depth and extent."
That brief, calm message, the last to be sent out by the oceanographic
stations, let loose upon the world such a hurricane of panic as it had
never known before. We look back, now, upon the night that followed
it as one of the most terrible in the history of humanity, a night in
which death and fear stalked together across the world like gigantic
twin destroyers. For in all the cities of the world, that night, were
such scenes, such rushing crowds and shouting men and flaring lights,
as no man had ever seen before.
In London the great Thames was already flooding over its embankments
into the great basin in which the city lay. The power-plants that lit
the great city were failing one by one as the rising waters reached
them, section after section snapping into sudden darkness, while away
to the west the soaring red flames of a great fire east a quivering
crimson glow across the doomed and drowning metropolis. Beneath that
ghastly light, through the swift-running streets, the panic-driven mobs
fought and splashed their way toward the nearest hills, toward the
open country, toward safety. Crowded automobiles whirled through those
streets in blind disregard of those whom they ran down. Ships all along
the flooded harbor stood out to sea, preferring rather to face the
great waves and mountainous tides than to be smashed helplessly against
their moorings. Airplanes high above buzzed unceasingly through the
night, to north and south and east, to wherever was higher ground.
And in New York, too, the seas were lapping now against the great
buildings that seemed to tower up in splendid disdain of the waters
clawing at their bases. There, too, were flooded streets, and rushing,
fear-mad mobs, and fierce men with burning eyes who bawled at street
corners of the wrath of the Lord and of the returning deluge. Already
immense crowds had collected on the heights of the island's northern
part, and from there, and from the other heights westward, they watched
with awe the sweeping seas that rolled and broke now across the squares
and parks and avenues of the proudest city in the world. And by then,
too, the populations of Boston, and Philadelphia, and San Francisco and
Seattle were fleeing inland by every road, and of New Orleans there
remained visible only the roofs of flooded buildings.
Everywhere on earth, in those hours, men were turning away from the
coasts, away from the vast, ravening seas that were hurling themselves
over the land, and were pushing inland toward higher ground, toward the
Alps and the Appalachians, toward the Pyrenees and the Andes, toward
the Himalayas and the Rockies. And even as they fled, news was flashing
along the last remaining lines of communication of great tidal waves
that had wiped away life in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands, of the
waters of the China and Yellow Seas black with the bodies of drowned
men, of the fear that had lit India red with the torch of terror, that
had prostrated black and howling hordes along flooded African coasts,
that had made of a hundred European cities infernos of roaring panic.
For through all of earth's five continents, that night, the roads
leading inland were the scene of the stampede of humanity.
Through the darkness of that dread night they went, vast, unorganized
mobs that fled blindly on, pushing and striking and trampling, and as
they fled the last organizations of men were slipping and crushing,
knocked down like children's houses of blocks by the giant hand of
fear. It was the flood, the ever-feared deluge of all the legends of
men, the horror that was springing upon all the earth. Men prayed
and fought and sobbed and killed themselves in their raving fear,
that night, but ever the remorseless waters rose higher, and higher,
and higher. Up and up they came, slowly, steadily, surely, up toward
the annihilation of man and the age-old reign of man, up toward the
whelming of a world.
3
Young Ernest Stevens, on that fateful night of the 7th which saw the
climax of the world's fear, had found himself in the vicinity of
Piccadilly when the first rush of the panic began. He had seen for
himself the sudden rise of the waters of the Thames which had taken
place during the preceding few days, and had also read the newspaper
accounts of the extraordinary and unexplainable heightening of the
sea's level, but was still so much centered on the strange passing of
Clinton and his expedition as to give the subject of general interest
but small attention. On this night, however, when the publication of
that epochal last message from the Portsmouth station sent the first
crowds hastening through the streets, Stevens realized his own position
and started off across the city toward his lodgings.
Before he had gone far the first great mobs were rushing through the
streets, beginning the vast exodus from the city, and disrupting all
the ordinary means of transportation. Already, too, salt floods were
creeping through the streets, adding to the panic of the crowds,
and as Stevens walked on, the lights of the city around him were
beginning to fail, fanning the flames of fear higher in the already
panic-mad crowds. By the time Stevens finally stumbled up the steps of
his lodging-house, the street on which it stood was wholly dark, and
covered by a few inches of water through which the fugitives along its
length were splashing.
He found the house itself deserted, and going to his own rooms quickly
gathered the most necessary of his belongings into a small bundle,
which he formed into a rough knapsack or pack. This done he turned
toward the door, then paused a moment at the window. Before him
stretched away the roofs and steeples of the vast city, all their
sparkling lights vanished now and darkened. From the west, though,
came a flickering red light, and he could see there a mighty uprush of
flames. The street outside, the waters in it slowly rising, was alive
with hurrying figures, many with great bundles or barrows, all pressing
on to escape from the city, and shouting hoarsely to one another.
Stevens turned toward the door, but as he did so he stopped suddenly
short. The door had swung open, and in its opening stood a man, a dark,
slender figure. The red glow of light from the window fell full upon
his face, and as Stevens saw it he cried out.
"Clinton!" he cried. "Good God!--Clinton!"
The other came swiftly toward him, and grasped his arm. "I thought
I might find you here, Stevens," he said, quietly. "It was a
thousand-to-one chance, but I came."
Stevens stumbled with him to the red-lit window, like a man in a dream.
"Clinton!" he exclaimed again. "Where in God's name have you been,
while this horror has been rising on the world? When did you come
back?"
Clinton pushed him back into the chair by the window, and silenced his
questions with an upraised hand. "I came back but a few hours ago,
Stevens," he said, "and I came here for you because I sail again in an
hour, and want you with me."
"Sail?" repeated Stevens, stupefied. "To where?"
"To the bottom of the Atlantic," said Clinton, calmly.
As the younger man stared at him he dropped into a chair beside him.
"To the bottom of the Atlantic," he repeated, his voice suddenly
pregnant with dread knowledge, "where I have been for weeks, where
there is a secret which I first of all men discovered, where the work
of untold ages is whirling now to its climax and sending this mighty
flood rolling out to drown our world!"
He was silent a moment, gazing out over the red-lit city while Stevens
stared at him in stunned amazement, and then went on. "You were to have
been of our expedition, Stevens, and you know what my plans were. You
know how we sailed in our submarine to penetrate the deeps that had
never yet been penetrated by man. Out of the English Channel, out into
the open Atlantic we sailed, west and northwest, until we had reached
at last the northern boundary of the Nelsen Deeps. And there our work
began.
"I need not tell you of that work, for our own radio reports recorded
the main features of it. We headed slowly southward, on the surface,
using our trawls, and during the next three days we were amazed at
the richness of the fields beneath us, the profusion of new forms and
variations of old ones that our trawls brought up. It was late on the
fourth day that we lost one of our trawls, as I reported. We drew up
the steel cable, to find that it had been severed near its end, and
though we were certain, of course, that it had broken when the trawl
caught on a snag, it was no ragged break but a clean, sharp cut, as
though done by giant shears. That it was which touched us first with a
sense of mystery and awe. Around us was only the vast empty panorama
of sea and sky, but beneath us were three miles and more of lightless
waters, a vast gulf unpenetrated since the world's birth by man or the
science of man. We worked on, southward, feeling as though under some
strange spell. And then, shattering that spell, came the thing which
one of our trawls brought up on the morning of the fifth day, the 11th.
"It was not so much _in_ the trawl as _on_ it, hanging from a corner as
though caught and brought up by the ascending trawl. It was a machine,
or part of a machine, a thing of shining metal about a foot in each
dimension. There was a framework of heavy metal rods, three of them;
inside were a chain of little gears and six slender tubes of what
seemed glass, with inside of each a red wire or thread. The framework's
three thick pillars were broken off sharp at the bottom, as though the
thing had been ripped by the trawl from some larger machine, yet in
itself the thing was a complete mystery. It was totally unlike anything
we had ever seen, the shining metal was a wholly unfamiliar one,
and the glasslike tubes, we found, were not glass but a transparent
metal of some sort. The thing was constructed, too, with a strength
and heaviness unusual in so small a mechanism. No one on earth would
construct it thus heavily; but suppose it had been actually constructed
at the sea's bottom from whence we had dragged it, to resist the
tremendous pressures there? What mysteries could be lurking in the
three miles of water below us?
"There was but one thing to do, to descend in the submarine for further
exploration, and after sending off a last message in which I hinted
of our discovery, without telling more lest the whole thing prove a
hoax, we began excited preparations for the descent. The deck-fittings
were dismantled, the heavy conning-tower doors clanged shut, and a
moment later the submarine's electric motors began to hum and we
slanted downward into the green waters, using both ballast-tanks and
diving-planes for our descent, and moving downward in a great spiral.
* * * * *
"Gazing through the little port-holes in the control room, Dr. Lewis,
Captain Evans, the submarine's commander, and I watched the sunlit
waters outside darkening as we sank downward. In those waters there
turned and flashed the shoals of surface fishes, but as we dropped
on, these disappeared, giving way to other forms that we could but
vaguely make out in the darkening waters. By the time the bathometric
dial registered five hundred feet the darkness about us was all
but absolute, and a word of command turned on the great under-sea
searchlights, from which long lanes of golden light cut out through the
gloom about us.
"Still down we sank, in that great spiral course, until we had reached
a thousand feet, two thousand, a mile, a mile and a half. Now and then
we glimpsed great sea-creatures that blundered into the glow of our
lights, cephalopods and gasteropods, and now and then one of the larger
deep-sea crustaceans. Most of these, however, seemed to flee from the
brilliance of our lights, though in one case we caught sight of a long,
snaky form that could only have belonged to the hydrophis family,
though it was of unprecedented thickness and length.
"The dial now registered a two-mile depth, and we snapped off the
submarine's lights, for in the waters about us were glowing the
phosphorescent creatures that lurk in these great depths. Floating by
in the darkness went here and there a _Brisinga elegans_, or luminous
starfish, its nineteen long tentacles glowing with misty light. The
snakelike stomias boa flashed past, the double rows of luminous disks
on the sides of its long body adding to the phosphorescent brilliance.
We made out, too, a squat, flat creature fully fifteen feet in length,
with great fanged mouth and luminous tail and fins, quite unknown to
the science of zoology, while scores of the rare _malacosteus niger_,
with its two headspots of greenish-gold light, could be seen around us.
Then, as we sank still farther downward, the glowing phosphorescent
forms about us thinned and vanished, while about us lay a dark and
almost lifeless region of waters.
"I turned to order the lights snapped on again, but stopped short at a
sudden cry from Lewis, at the port-hole beside me. He could not speak,
only pointing down in utmost excitement through the glass, and as I too
gazed down, awe and astonishment fell on me. For glimmering up toward
us from far below, through the dark waters, was a faint white light, a
strange, cold radiance that was growing rapidly stronger as we dropped
down toward it. In stunned silence we watched, as our craft dipped
down, and now at last we began to see its source.
"A thousand feet below us there stretched an unimaginable scene. It was
the ocean's floor, a level, somewhat rolling plain, and on it, within
this vast region of white radiance, were grouped scores, hundreds,
thousands of strange structures, great globes of shining metal, pierced
by doorways, which were of uniform size, each being fully three hundred
feet in diameter. They were ranged in long streets or avenues with
mathematical precision. Away into the distance as far as the eye could
reach stretched this mighty city of globes, and I saw that on the
top of each globe was a small squat mechanism, like that which our
trawl had brought up but larger, and while these mechanisms were not
themselves luminous or shining, there sprang from them in some way rays
of white light which made it plain that it was these which produced the
strange white light that bathed all this gigantic city.
"Our craft was slanting downward, toward and across the city as we
watched in awe, and as it did so we made out two things. The first
was that far away there was a spot at the city's heart where were no
globes, a vast, smooth-walled pit that seemed to sink down into the
sea's floor for an unguessable distance, and which I judged was fully
two miles in diameter. Near its edge there soared up above the globes
of the city, for fully two thousand feet, a slender tower of the same
shining metal, at whose tip was a small, bulb-like room. I seemed to
see, also, vague, great shapes that moved about this tower, but at that
moment my attention was shifted suddenly by Lewis' exclamation to the
city beneath us, and I saw for the first time the people of that city.
"Through the streets, but a few hundred feet below us, now, there
moved countless numbers of black forms, creeping along the smooth,
metal-paved avenues like great black slugs. And as we dropped closer
toward them we saw that that was what they were--great slug-people,
their bodies thick cylinders of dark flesh, perhaps eight feet in
length and three in thickness, on which they crawled forward like
giant worm-things, their only limbs two short, thick flippers near
the head, their only sense-organs that we could see being two great,
dark, shining eyes like the eyes of an octopus--great slug-creatures,
inhabitants of the waters here at the sea's bottom, crawling through
this strange and awful city whose existence men have never dreamed--a
city at the bottom of the sea, a city glowing with white, unearthly
radiance, a city peopled by unhuman creatures, but reared into being by
more than human power!
"We stared down upon it, in indescribable awe and wonder, and then
Evans, the commander, uttered a sudden exclamation. A group of the
strange slug-creatures had collected in the street just below us,
gazing up through the waters toward us with their strange, dark eyes,
and now we saw that across the city toward us was striding an erect,
gigantic shape. It came from the direction of the great pit and tower,
where there could be glimpsed others like it--an erect, vast shape
of metal, striding toward us on two mighty limbs or columns which
must have measured a thousand feet in height, and which supported at
their top a small disk-platform on which were grouped two or three of
the slug-creatures, operating their vast mechanism. From below this
platform, too, there projected a great jointed limb, or arm, of almost
the same length as the two great legs, and as the vast thing strode
toward us over the city of globes this mighty arm was reaching out
toward our craft.
"I uttered a shout, and heard a hoarse order from Evans shouted through
the speaking-tube, and a moment later the submarine shot upward with
all the power of its motors. But as it did so there came a jarring
shock and clash of metal, and then our craft was pulled downward,
its propellers spinning in vain. The great upraised arm of the giant
striding machine had gripped us and held us as a child might hold a toy.
"Now, with that great arm circling the submarine and holding it
tightly, the vast mechanism began to stride back across the city, and
a moment later had halted, and was lowering our craft to the city's
floor. Below us, we saw, was a group of three of the globe-buildings
set apart from the others in a small clearing, and before one of these
the arm that held our craft placed it, still holding it tightly. We
saw the great door of the globe-building, fifty feet across and twice
that in height, opening by sliding down into the metal pavement below.
Ten feet inside was another similar door which was opening likewise,
both great doors being quite transparent, though apparently of immense
strength. In a moment our craft had been pushed inside, into the bare,
white-lit interior of the great metal globe, and then both great doors
rolled back up and closed tightly. Our submarine, with all in it, was
prisoned in the waters inside.
[Illustration: "That great arm circled the submarine and held it
tightly."]
"The next moment, though, there came the throb of great pumps, and
swiftly the waters inside the globe began to sink, while a strange
hissing began. A glance at the dials explained it, for as the waters
sank they were being replaced by air, at a pressure the same as at
sea-level. In a moment more the waters had disappeared entirely, and
cautiously we opened the conning-tower doors and stepped out. The air,
we found, was quite pure and breathable, though with a strange odor of
chemicals, and had it not been for the vast white-lit city of globes
lying beneath the waters outside our transparent doors, one might have
thought himself in some room on earth's surface.
"I knew, though, as the submarine's startled occupants stepped out
into our strange prison, how far we were from earth's surface, how
unfathomably far from the life of humanity in this city of the sea's
dark depths, this white-lit town of the trackless ocean's floor.
For I knew now how far from humanity were these strange and fearful
slug-creatures who were of more than human intelligence, but with no
human point of view, who could capture men and put them in this prison
of air at the sea's bottom as we of earth would capture some creatures
of the sea and imprison them in a prison of water, or aquarium, on
earth!
4
"We were not long left undisturbed in our strange prison. Within a
few minutes we saw, approaching our building from outside along the
smooth-paved street, a group of the slug-creatures who carried with
them what seemed strange suits of flexible metal, with transparent
eye-holes. Three of them donned these, fastening them carefully, and
then the outer door of our prison rolled down and the three moved or
crawled into the vestibule, or space between the doors, which was
filled with water, of course. A moment later came the throbbing of
pumps again, the vestibule emptied of water and filled with air, and as
the inner door rolled down in turn the three crawled into our prison.
Their armored suits, we saw, were filled with water to enable them to
venture into the unfamiliar element of air, just as a human diver in an
air-filled suit will venture into water.
"A moment we humans stared at these strange figures, in sickened
horror, while those outside watched us carefully through the clear
door, ready to open it and send the destroying floods in upon us at any
wrong move on our part. Then one of the three, with a long, slender
rod in his grasp, moved to the metal wall of our prison and drew a
sketch, or diagram, of sea and land, with slug-like creatures at the
sea's bottom and erect, manlike ones upon the land. He pointed from the
former to himself, and from the latter to us, and I stepped forward and
repeated his gesture to show our understanding.
"With this beginning he worked on, with other sketches and diagrams,
establishing a slender line of communication between us, while those
of our party watched in fascinated horror. At the end of an hour or
more of this the things left us, through the vestibule-chamber, leaving
us all in a strange state of wonder and fear. There was but little
conversation on the part of any of us, and though we examined our
prison carefully there seemed no chance whatever for escape; so the
hours that followed passed in a semi-lassitude and silence, broken only
by a sketchy meal from our own stores, after which most of our party
resigned themselves to sleep. The air, we noted, remained quite pure,
and was apparently made artificially by these creatures in some way,
and pumped to us from outside.
"The next day passed in the same way, and the next, and the next,
strange nightless and dawnless days, eternally lit by the perpetual
white radiance, which followed one another like the time-periods of
a dream. In those days, however, the creatures who were our captors
persisted in endeavoring to establish communication with us, for their
own purposes, and gradually Lewis and I attained to an exchange of
ideas with them. Their purpose, we found, was to question us concerning
the world above, particularly concerning our nations and cities and
their relation to the sea. We did not understand the purpose of those
questions, then, but bit by bit during that exchange of ideas we came
to learn something of their own history and plans, and began at last to
understand what terrible peril was hanging above our world.