CHAPTER III.

TWO THOUSAND FATHOMS!

I find it difficult to convey a picture of those following days. Upon so large a canvas as our great, diversified world surface, the few futile strokes I can give must leave most of all to the imagination. What fragments came within my limited knowledge I can tell as they recur to me. No one could grasp it as a whole, except those in authority, flanked with their busy scientific staffs, poring over endless reports, charts, summaries of world conditions and the myriad of diversified world happenings--abnormal, startling, fearful some of them; wide-flung events seemingly so unrelated, but each making up its tiny portion of the whole.

We got them there in Dr. Plantet’s home at Sea End hourly from the newscasters. Ten fathoms of water gone from the oceans, harbors dry, rivers tumbling down new waterfalls where once had been the river’s mouth. A hundred local items of emptied water fronts, fishing vessels stranded in the harbor mud, canals being closed everywhere to traffic.

A lurid, dramatic broadcasted advertisement by the Associated Bureau of World Air Commerce: “Schedules changed to meet new conditions. Air lines to the rescue! Stranded island and coast ports to be given air traffic. A thousand new local ships to be commissioned at once.” An ad by the great Dayton builders, requiring additional men for the night shifts.

Hundreds of such things. Newscasters by the hour recited dry statistics of harbor depths, local climate changes, routine weather reports, a learned, somewhat pessimistic summary of the world’s fresh water supplies. A company organized to drill, wholesale, for artesian wells. A panic in the hot spring area of New Zealand. A spouting geyser reported bursting into existence in the Soudan desert. Etna and Vesuvius quiet--the Pacific volcanoes all spouting steam.

The newscaster’s voice came day and night from our receiving grid. The tape clicked beside it, an endless stream of recorded events.

An exodus of people from the Gaspé fishing region; signs of a growing tendency to panic throughout all the South Seas; a Japanese mandate that none must travel from one island to another; an iceberg coming down far below the normal summer limit of drift in the North Pacific; ocean currents disturbed; a prognostication of what the new rainfall might be in various localities.

“Rot!” snorted Dr. Plantet. “They do not know--there is no one who knows anything about it!”

The British Isles were perturbed. There was much learned discussion concerning the Gulf Stream. Without it the cold of an almost Arctic winter would settle upon London. They had always been perturbed over the precious Gulf Stream, these Britishers. I recall reading that three-quarters of a century ago some of them had been bothered by the Yankee railroad from Florida to Key West. And when the additional road causeways were completed there was more British comment, claiming that the Gulf Stream was influenced adversely to effect the mild British winters. Nonsense, of course. But they had real cause now to be worried.

With my company giving me definite leave, I was free these days to remain with the Plantets. Dr. Plantet seemed to want me. He hinted that he would need me for some rôle in this world drama that I might play to advantage. He no more than hinted at it; but I waited, eagerly to welcome it.

We spent most of our time at the air speakers. Polly was excited, tense with it all. Arturo said almost nothing. I was too engrossed at the time to remark him closely. But I recall that queer aspect of brooding; an absorption in his own queer thoughts; a moodiness. He seemed, often, to want solitude.

I would miss him from the instrument room, finding him perhaps sitting on the shore front, where, far out on a slimy, descending slope, the ocean lapped a full seventy feet from where it should have been. A graceful, slim figure of a boy with gentility stamped in every line of him; a romantic little figure, like Raleigh, the boy, Sir Walter, sitting at the ocean’s edge, brooding, dreaming his own dreams with the lure of the sea upon him.

Looking back upon it the comparison strikes me. But at the time I recall I was annoyed with Arturo. He impressed me as rather sullen--a spoiled, sullen boy. Dr. Plantet had one evening said something with an edge to it--some trivial thing, unimportant; and Arturo had flushed with a deep, angry flush--and with quivering lip, had left the house. It was hours before he returned.

We had had numerous world reports that evening of vital interest--especially to any normal young man. But Arturo barely glanced at the printed tape lying in the basket; and wholly without interest sat in a shadowed corner of the room. It hurt Dr. Plantet--himself so actively plunged now into this coming crisis of the world’s history--hurt him that he should sire a son like this.

* * * * *

My picture seems confused. In that quality it approximates the reality, for these days of July, 1990, were indeed a confusion.

Dr. Plantet was away for a day several times. Always, while at home, for hours at a time he was shut up alone in the instrument room, talking to New York or London; consulting. A stream of incoming official calls demanded him. I heard him once when he had left the audible speaker connected--heard him being questioned regarding the progress of his ship; and he had replied that already the successful casting had been made in the Norfolk shops.

I demanded of Polly what that meant.

“He’ll tell you presently, Jeff. You--look here, Jeff, that reminds me.” She put her hands up to my shoulders, holding me to face her. Dear little Polly, so earnest! Her brown eyes were glowing with her earnestness. “Jeff, when father tells you, I want you to persuade him that I am in it, too. You will, won’t you?”

“In what, Polly?”

“He’ll tell you. He, and you of course, and Arturo--but also myself! There are to be four--I heard him say that. And I want to be the fourth.”

I answered her seriously, as I knew she desired. “I can’t promise that, Polly, until I know what it is.”

It was nearly the end of July before Dr. Plantet told me of his plans. During all these July days of confusion there had been no further sign of any human enemy menacing our world. Surface traffic by sea had everywhere been discontinued nor were any submersibles in service. The oceans were abandoned, while a tremendous activity on the part of all aircraft organizations was manifest everywhere.

No sign of an enemy. There had been minor panics among the publics of the Eastern Islands; but the fear there was gradually waning. And in the Western world, comparatively remote from the scene of the threat, the idea of a human enemy whom no one had ever seen, was derided. It was best perhaps. There is nothing more dangerous than panic.

But officially there was no derision. Official activities were more or less secret; rumors of them leaked out, of course, while bulletins distorted the facts to what officialdom considered was for the public good. But through Dr. Plantet’s activities I was made aware of much that was going on. The “Yellow Peril” was lost and forgotten. All the world’s governments were working together. The huge armored aircrafts were being recommissioned. Men were being drilled. The Yellow War, with all its main battles fought in the air, had given a tremendous stimulus to aviation, and all the devices which it had developed for dealing death were being made ready anew.

Underocean warfare was a thing of the distant past. But that, too, was being resuscitated. I heard that they were building armored submersibles. A Brazilian engineer, one Lopez, came suddenly into prominence with his claim for an underwater death-dealing ray.

They brought forth from the United States Navy Yard shops, new models of the ancient ocean bombs, called mines--things that could be electrically exploded. And tiny traveling bomb-ships called torpedoes.

One of these latter was tested off Hatteras. In Dr. Plantet’s instrument room we sat watching the test as it showed on one of his receiving mirrors. It was broadcasted over the world--I suppose fifty million or more people must have been watching it as we were. We had a good view; they had the finder on a small plane which circled back and forth. We saw the small submersible, awash at the surface, shoot out the torpedo. It came up like a child’s toy, and then dived a few feet. It traveled swiftly; we could follow its progress by the tiny aërial projecting up from it, cleaving the surface like the periscope of an old-fashioned sub-marine. It sped straight for its target--a small vessel they had towed out and left drifting. There was a dull, muffled report--we heard it plainly over the audiphone--and a heave of the water. The small ship presently sank.

It seemed rather a futile demonstration. But there were rumors of the Lopez ray--and diving bombs which aircraft could drop from a considerable height.

A multitude of official activities. Dr. Plantet was concerned with many of them--but mostly with this enterprise of his own at Norfolk. He was almost without sleep. Far into the night he would sit over charts, or blue prints--or casting up seemingly endless mathematic formulæ. And several times engineers came from Norfolk to see him, frequently taking him back with them.

* * * * *

On July 29 he chose to tell me what he was doing.

“Come into the library, Jeff.” It was after midnight, and he had just returned from a swift visit to Norfolk. “Come into the library, you and Polly. Where is Arturo?”

The soft, plaintive notes of Arturo’s violin from his bedroom upstairs told us only too surely.

A shadow crossed Dr. Plantet’s tired face; but his muttered contemptuous oath was vigorous enough. He said brusquely:

“Very well--let him alone, Jeff. He probably isn’t interested.”

Polly had joined us. “He is, father--I’ll get him.”

I heard her voice when she got up the incline:

“Arturo! Father is back--it’s successful--they’ve tried the hull under pressure! Boy, dear--”

The door closed upon her; but she came down presently with Arturo. I had not seen him all day.

“_Hola_, Jeff!” He smiled at me. “Good evening, father.” He kissed his father--I had not seen him do it for a year. “Polly says it is a success--I’m very glad, father, dear.”

I did not miss Dr. Plantet’s gesture as Arturo kissed him; nor mistake it. His powerful hands on Arturo’s slim shoulders seemed involuntarily to tighten; a caress--and it seemed a gesture of possession, as though this son, drifting away in spirit, were suddenly restored to him. A stern, vigorous man, cruel sometimes in his sternness; but I could see at that instant the love that he bore for his son--could see it in his convulsive, clinging gesture, as if he feared that Arturo, who had come to him now, might soon be snatched away.

It may have been a premonition.

“Yes, lad, a success. Come into the library--I’ll tell you all about it.”

We went in. I sat listening to Dr. Plantet. But for a time my gaze and half my thoughts were upon Arturo. He seemed this night abruptly older. He sat with what I fancied were wandering thoughts, striving to listen to his father, striving to nod, to smile, once or twice to question. But his mind was on something else--something eagerly frightening.

I could not miss the tenseness of him, and the new, older aspect of affection with which he regarded his father and Polly. Something within his mind absorbed him--burning eagerness for something frightening.

Polly saw it. She eyed me once significantly; she moved over and sat beside Arturo, with her arm around him. And he leaned down and kissed her.

Strange adventure, which Dr. Plantet now proposed us! Awe-inspiring; to me, adventurous by nature and with the lure of the sea upon me, it nevertheless came as a shock. And a great thrill.

I listened, and presently forgot Arturo, and had no eyes for anything but Dr. Plantet’s tired, intent face; I had no thought for anything but his words. He was brief, abrupt. The oceans were receding, but it might be months before they had fallen appreciably toward their greater hidden depths. Meanwhile, our governments were preparing to fight some unknown, unseen human enemy. No one knew the nature of this menace. If we were to be assailed, where would it be? In the Pacific, doubtless, but the Pacific is a wide-flung area.

“I believe,” said Dr. Plantet, “that if we could locate them, we would find this enemy preparing to attack us. We will be months getting ready. In the meantime, what? Are we to wait without trying to find out what our assailants are doing? The floor of the great Pacific basin--suppose somewhere down there--”

He paused. I stammered suddenly: “You’ve been building a ship--but the deeps? Why, it’s unthinkable!”

“But it is not, Jeff! Oh, the great deeps are beyond us with the water that now lies over them; they are safe from our prying eyes. But I can penetrate two thousand fathoms!”

I think I had never seen him so vehement; a triumph upon him, an excitement almost boyish with this enterprise the product of his genius and intrepidity.

“I’ve been working on it a long time, Jeff--from the very first reports of the abnormal tides. Polly will tell you how I’ve worked. If we can locate this enemy, even determine beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is such an enemy, what a stimulus to our own preparations for defense--the possibility perhaps of our nation making an attack and carrying the warfare down to them!”

* * * * *

Just to-day, he said, they had tested the hull of his tiny ship for that depth. Two thousand fathoms--twelve thousand feet! The craft was a tiny affair indeed! A crew of three or four. A little dolphin, flashing under the sea with a speed up to seventy knots.

“In barely two weeks we’ll be ready, Jeff. Oh, they haven’t stinted me; the government has stood ready with its funds and all its resources. I’ve had materials from a dozen countries rushed here by the fastest wasps we could commandeer. I’ve had the pick of all the technical men developing this new principle. Hydraulics--internal, reciprocating pressure, call it what you will, we haven’t named it yet--and I’m using the new Parodyne atomic engine.

“It’s nearly ready--the cleanest running little thing--Parodyne himself believes we’ll get seventy knots. The Australian Commonwealth Through Mail is planning to stop their flyer at Norfolk and carry us over the Pacific. Set us down where we like to begin our voyage. A diving range of two thousand fathoms, Jeff--we’ve tested it for that, with a fair margin of safety. And I can get another five hundred of littoral region with the Franklin searchlights.”

Two thousand fathoms! The great unknown oceans, with this little dolphin of a ship flashing down into them to such a depth! And I was to be on board! It set a thrill upon me. So might Columbus have felt when from the queen’s fair hand came the money that made his voyage possible. But it must have been a thrill both of eagerness and of fear.

Two thousand fathoms? Why, we could skim the sides of the Tonga and Marshall Ridges; follow the Marianne Trench to where it yawned into the Nero Deep. Two thousand fathoms? What gullies might we explore! What troughs and furrows could we traverse up the steep slopes to the island-bearing rises! Why, what a realm of the unknown to bring so suddenly to our ken!

Dr. Plantet was saying: “You’ll go, Jeff, of course. Ah, now you see why I’ve kept you here--to be my navigator. I could not find one I would sooner trust, for all your youth. If our world is to be assailed, we’ll locate the point of attack--”

And I was chosen for such a voyage as this! I suddenly saw Dr. Plantet to be a name immortal; and the man himself sat here planning his voyage into the great Pacific. And it seemed that something of Balboa and Magellan and Tasman must be here in the room with us now, hovering here--something of them, come here to inspire and to welcome this new maker of the history of the sea.

And I was chosen to be upon such a voyage as this! I think that the humble sailors of those ancient lurching ships were thrilled by the adventure of their enterprise, but thrilled even more by a fear as they fronted the unknown.