CHAPTER I

Harkness Explains His Disappearance

The maiden voyage of the X-111 was ill-fated from the first. Perhaps the new inventions had not yet been perfected, or perhaps, in the haste of wartime, adequate tests had not been made; at any rate, the vessel developed mechanical troubles after her first half day at sea. To begin with, the rudder and steering apparatus proved unmanageable; then, after hours spent in making repairs, the engines showed a tendency to balk under the tremendous speed we were ordered to maintain; and finally, when we had about solved the engine problem, we had the misfortune to collide with a half-submerged derelict, while running on the surface, and one of our water-tight compartments sprang a leak.

Immediately following the accident, we had risen to the surface, for the break was about on a level with our waterline, and the compartment could not be completely flooded so long as we did not submerge. Yet Captain Gavison warned us not to waste a moment, and the men worked with desperate speed to repair the damage, for we knew that we were in the zone of the German U-boat, and that any delay might prove perilous, if not fatal. Unfortunately, the sea was unusually calm and the day was blue and clear, so that even our low-lying hulk could be sighted many miles across the waters.

I do not know precisely at what position we were then stationed, except that it was somewhere in the Eastern Atlantic, and at a point where, according to the warnings of our Secret Service, a concentration of German submarines was to be expected. At any other time we would have welcomed the opportunity to come to grips with the foe; but now, in our disabled condition, we kept a lookout with grave misgivings, and silently prayed that the damage might be repaired before the enemy slunk into view. Yet it was slow work to man the pumps and at the same time to weld a strip of metal across the jagged gap in our side; and hours passed while we stood there working thigh-deep in water, our heads bent low, for there was but two or three feet of breathing space beneath the curved iron ceiling. Suppressed growls and curses came from our lips each time a sudden surge of the waters interfered with the welding. Meanwhile all was in confusion; the men worked with the feverish inefficiency of terror, scarcely heeding the orders of the officers; the chief contents of the compartment floated about almost unnoted. I distinctly remember that several articles, including a life preserver which one of the recruits had unfastened in his fright, were washed overboard.

Still, we did make some progress, and after four or five hours, and just as the blood-red sun was sinking low in the west, we found our task nearing completion. A few more minutes, and the welding would be accomplished; a few more minutes, and darkness would be upon us, leaving us free from fear of attack for the next eight or ten hours.

It was just when we felt safest that the real danger presented itself. A swift trail of white shot across the waters far to westward, and, advancing at full speed, vanished in a long, frothy furrow just in our wake. “A German U-boat! A U-boat two points off the port bow!” frantically cried the watch; and we scrambled from the flooded compartment as the Captain gave the order “Submerge!” Now we heard the rapid churning of our engines as we went plunging into the blackness beneath the sea; now we made ready to launch a torpedo of our own as our periscope showed us the disappearing tip of an enemy submarine; now we were hurled into an exciting chase as our prodigiously powerful searchlights illumined whole leagues of the water, even revealing the dark, cigar-shaped hulk of the foe. Had we not been impeded by the dead weight of a compartment full of water, we would unquestionably have overtaken the enemy, rammed it and ended its career; even as it was, we seemed to be gaining upon it, and we had hopes of shooting up unseen and bullet-like from the dark, and with tremendous impact smiting it in two. Not even the unexpected appearance of a second submarine altered our plans. Handicapped as we were, we would show our superiority to both the enemy craft!

But it was at this point that mechanical troubles again betrayed us. Overworked by our excessive burst of speed, our engines (which were of the super-electric type recently invented by Cogswell) gave signs of slowing up and stopping; and so dangerously overheated were they, that our Captain had to halt our vessel abruptly, almost within striking distance of the foe. Our position became extremely precarious, for at any moment the German searchlights might spy us out, and a few undersea bombs might send us to the bottom.

As our own equipment had purposely been made as light as possible, we were provided with no explosive shells other than torpedoes: hence we were compelled to rise to the surface in order to attack. This, we realized, was a hazardous expedient, since both the enemy vessels were already in a position to answer our bombardment, volley for volley. But trusting to the gathering darkness and to our aggressive tactics to win us the advantage, we unhesitatingly rose to the level, and, with as little delay as possible, discharged a torpedo toward the dim, low-lying form of the foe.

Whether that projectile reached its goal, none of us will ever be able to say. From the sudden, furious eruption of spray in the direction of the enemy craft, I am inclined to believe that this was among the U-boats later reported missing; yet, the torpedo may merely have struck some floating object and so have lost its prey. Whatever the results, we were unable to observe with certainty, for at the same moment a gleaming streak shot toward us across the dark waters, and the next instant we went sprawling about the deck as a dull thudding crash came to our ears and the vessel shook and wavered as though in an earthquake’s grip. Half dazed from the shock, we gathered ourselves together and rose uncertainly to our feet, staring at one another in dull consternation. And at the same moment one of the seamen burst wildly into the cabin, despair and terror in his maddened eyes. “The central compartment!” he cried. “The central compartment. It’s flooded, all flooded!” And as if to prove his words, we felt ourselves sinking, sinking slowly, though we had not been ordered to submerge; the darkness of the twilight skies quickly gave way to the darkness beneath the ocean.

* * * * *

It was some minutes before we quite realized what was happening. Accustomed as we were to undersea traveling, we did not at first understand that this was an adventure quite out of the ordinary. Even when the waters had lost their first pale translucency and had become utterly black and opaque, we did not realize our terrible predicament. Only after our vessel began listing violently, and we felt the deck sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees, did we recognize the full horror of our position. Although we could see not one inch beyond the thick glass portholes, I had an indefinable sense that we were sinking, sinking down, down, down through vague and unknown abysses; and the stark and helpless terror on the assembled faces gave proof that the others shared my feelings. Not a word did we utter. Indeed, speaking would not have been easy, for a low, continuous roaring was in our ears, a hoarse, muffled roaring reminding me of the murmuring in a sea-shell. At the same time, a strange depression overwhelmed my senses; it seemed as though the atmosphere had suddenly become thick and heavy, too heavy for breathing; it seemed as though an unnatural weight had been piled upon me, threatening to crush and stifle me. Yet I did notice that the vessel quivered violently and lunged upward every few seconds, in a furious effort to right itself and rise to the surface. I did fancy that I heard the buzzing of the engines at times, an intermittent buzzing that was most disquieting; and I found myself, like the others, hanging to the brass railings to steady myself when the ship heaved and shuddered, or to keep my footing when we slanted downward.

Perhaps five minutes passed when the door leading forward was thrust open, and Captain Gavison climbed precariously into the room. All eyes were bent upon him in silent inquiry; but his grim, stoically firm countenance was far from reassuring. It was apparent that he had something to say, and that he did not care to say it; and several anxious moments elapsed while he stood glowering upon us, evidently undecided whether to give his message words.

Yet even at this crisis he could not forget discipline. His first words brought us no information, and his first action was to station us about the room in orderly fashion, assigning each to some specific duty.

“I will not keep the facts from you,” he declared, with slow, deliberate accentuation, when finally we were all in position. “Three of our compartments are flooded. The other compartments seem to be holding out as yet, but the great mass of water in our hold is bearing us rapidly downward, and the engines seem unable to neutralize the effect. At the last reading, we were nine hundred and twenty-seven feet below sea level.”

“Great God! What are we to do about it?” I gasped, in biting terror.

“Suggestions are in order,” stated the Captain, laconically.

But no suggestion was forthcoming.

“Of course, we are in no immediate danger ...” he resumed. But he might have spared his words. Most of us had had sufficient experience of undersea travel to know that the danger was real enough. Barring the remote contingency that the engines would be brought back into efficient working order, there were only two possibilities. On the one hand, we might reach the bottom of the sea, and, stranded there, would perish of starvation or slow suffocation. Or, in the second place, we might continue drifting downward until the tremendous pressure of the water, proving too strong even for the stout steel envelope of our vessel, would bend and crush it like an egg-shell.

Although we could no longer guide our course, our gigantic searchlights were at once brought into play, piercing the water with brilliant yellow streamers. Yet they might have been searchlights in a tomb, for they showed us nothing except the minute wavy dark shapes that occasionally drifted in and out of our line of vision. There was something ghastly, I thought, about that light, that intense unearthly sallow light, which glided slowly in long curves and spirals about the thick enveloping darkness. And the very penetrating power of the rays served only to accentuate the horror. For the illumination ended in nothingness; nothingness seemed to stretch above us, beneath us, and to all sides of us; we were enfolded in it as in a black mantle; it seemed to be stretching out long arms to fetter us, to gather us up, to strangle us slyly.

* * * * *

Slowly, with agonizing slowness, the moments crept by; slowly we continued sinking, down, down, down, ever down and down, with movement gradual and constantly diminishing, yet never ceasing. Never before in history, we told ourselves, had living men been plunged so far beneath the ocean. Our instruments recorded first twelve hundred feet, then fourteen, then sixteen, then eighteen hundred feet below sea level!

And as we sank downward, we became aware that we were not the only living creatures in these depths. Our searchlights made us the center of attraction for myriads of scaly things; whole schools and squadrons of fishes were gathering moth-like in the vivid illumination thrown out by our vessel. Some were long, snaky monsters, with thin heads set with rows of spike-like teeth, and tiny eyes that gleamed evilly in the uncanny light; some were lithe sea dragons, with wolfish mouths and sabre-like bony appendages projecting from low foreheads; some were many-colored, rainbow-hued or streaked with black and golden, or red and azure, or yellow and white; some had chameleon eyes that flashed first green and then blue, according to the play of the light about them; many were flitting to and fro, circling and spiralling and doubling back and forth at incredible speed; and not a few, unacquainted with the ways of submarines, collided full-tilt with the thick glass of our portholes.

But as our depth gradually increased, our finny visitors began to give way to others stranger still. When we were twenty-two hundred feet below the surface, the searchlights were no longer necessary to reveal the denizens of the deep, for the inhabitants of those unthinkable regions carried their own lamps! And how they amazed us and startled us!--how, in our shuddering nerve-racking terror, they appeared to us as ghosts or avenging fiends, or struck our overworked imaginations as approaching foes or rescuers! Suddenly, out of the deathly blackness, a spurt of green light appeared, swiftly widening until it seemed an unearthly searchlight--and, from a narrow focus of flame, two huge burning green eyes would shoot forth, darting cold malice at us through the glass port, until the yellow electric light would seem tinged with an emerald reflection. Or else a tiny flattened disk, softly phosphorescent throughout and marked on one surface by two bright beady eyes, would come floating in our direction like a pale apparition; or, again, a long dark rod, brilliantly white like a living flashlight, would dart curving and gleaming toward us out of the remote gloomy depths. But more terrifying than any of these were the nameless monsters with invisible bodies and lidless, fiery yellow eyes of the size of baseballs,--eyes that stared in at us, and stared and stared, as though all the concentrated horror of the universe were glaring upon us, seeking to ferret us out and mark us for its victims.

And still we were sinking, unceasingly sinking, till the last faint hope had died in the heart of the most sanguine, and in despair and with half-mumbled phrases we admitted that there could be no rescue for us. When we were twenty-five hundred feet below the surface, the fury of expectation had given place to a blank and settled despondency; when the distance was twenty-eight hundred feet, each was striving in his own way to prepare himself for the fate which all felt to be but a question of hours. In our panic-stricken horror, we had all long ago forgotten the positions assigned us by the Captain; and the Captain himself did not appear to notice where we were. Young Rawson, the newest of the recruits, had gone down on his knees, and with tears in his eyes was murmuring half audible prayers; Matthew Stangale, one of the oldest and most hardened of the seamen, was pacing restlessly back and forth, back and forth, in the narrow compartment, clenching his fists furiously and muttering to himself; Daniel Howlett, veteran of many campaigns, contented himself with a suppressed growling and profanity, and his curses were echoed by his companions; Frank Ripley, a college gridiron hero, enlisted for the war, buried himself in a corner of the room, his face covered by his hands, the very picture of dejection, though every once in a while, wistfully and half-furtively, he would let his gaze travel to a little photograph he guarded close to his bosom. And as for Captain Gavison, on whom we had fastened our last fading hope of escape--he merely stood near the porthole with arms clenched behind his back and thin lips tightly compressed, peering out into the black waters as though he read there some secret hidden from the obtuse gaze of his followers.

* * * * *

We were below the three thousand foot level when fresh cause for anxiety appeared. “The holy saints have mercy on us!” suddenly exclaimed James Stranahan, one of the common seamen, as he crossed himself piously. And pointing in awe-stricken amazement through one of the glass spy-holes which led from the deck, down through the bottom of the ship, he called attention to a dim shimmering luminescence far below. Excitedly we crowded about him, almost tumbling over one another in our eagerness and terror, but for a moment we could see nothing. Then, slowly, as we stood straining our eyes to fathom the blackness, we became aware of a vague filmy, widespread sheet of light twinkling faintly beneath us, and remote as the stars of an inverted Milky Way.

A sheet of light beneath us, at the bottom of the sea! In incredulous astonishment, we turned to one another, scarcely able to believe our senses, our horror written plainly in our gaping eyes! And in silence, and with fear-blanched faces, half of the company made the sign of the cross.

“Sure it’s a ghost, a deep-sea ghost!” ventured the superstitious Stranahan.

“It’s where the sea serpents have their home!” put in Stangale, with an abortive attempt to be jocular. “There’s ten million of them down there, with devil’s eyes of fire!”

“Maybe it’s the Evil One himself!” suggested Stranahan, not content with a single guess. “What if it’s the very throne-room of Hell, and them are the flames of Old Nick!”

These words did not seem to reassure the rest of the crew. Several were trembling visibly, and several continued to cross themselves in silence.

Meanwhile the Captain had ordered the searchlights turned downward, and in long loops and curves the cutting light swept the darkness beneath. But not a thing was visible, except for a few flapping fishy forms; and our lanterns served only to conceal the mysterious luminescence.

Yet, when the searchlights were again directed upward, that luminescence became more distinct and seemed to stretch to infinite distances on all sides. But it was still incalculably remote, and still filled us with alarm and foreboding. Whatever it was (and we could not help feeling that it was evil), we knew that it was a thing beyond the reach of all human experience; whatever it was, it was a monstrous thing, possibly malevolent and terrible, and not inconceivably ghostly and supernatural.

But as we continued to sink, I began to doubt whether any of us should live to solve the mystery. The air in our overcrowded compartments was becoming oppressively heavy and vitiated; we were like men locked in sealed vaults, and there was no possibility of renewing our exhausted oxygen supply. Already I was beginning to feel drowsy from the lack of air; my head was aching dully and I had almost ceased to care where we went or what befell us. Today, when I look back upon the racking events of those terrible hours, I feel sure that I was not far from delirium; and when I recall how some of my comrades reclined drunkenly on the floor, with half-hysterical mumblings and wailings, I am certain that there were but few of us, who retained our right senses.

There is, indeed, a blank space in my memory concerning what occurred at about this time; I may have fallen off into a doze or sodden slumber lasting for minutes or even for hours. I can only say that I have a recollection of coming abruptly to myself, as from a state of coma; and, with a sudden jolt of understanding, I realized where I was, and observed with a shock that half a dozen of my comrades were gathered together in a little group, pointing downward with excited exclamations.

Staggering to my feet, I joined them, and in a moment shared in their agitation. The lights beneath us were now far brighter--they no longer formed a vague shimmering screen, but were concentrated brilliantly in a score of golden globes of the apparent size of the sun. “Could it be that the ocean too has its suns?” I asked myself, as when one asks dazed questions in a dream. And looking at those spectral lights that wavered and gleamed through the pale translucent waters, I felt that this was surely but a nightmare from which I should soon awaken. Fantastic fish, with triangular glowing red heads and searchlight eyes projected on slender tubes, darted before our windows in innumerable schools; but these seemed almost familiar now by comparison with those eerie golden lights below; and it was upon the golden illumination that my gaze was riveted as we settled slowly down and down. Soon it became apparent that the great central globes were not the only source of the radiance, for smaller points of light gradually became visible, some of them moving, actually moving as though borne by living hands!--and even the spaces between the lights seemed to wear an increasing golden luster! Yet with the golden was mingled a singular tinge of green, a green that seemed scarcely of the waters; and the mysterious depths were no longer black, but olive-hued, as though the light came filtering to us through some solid dark-green medium.

But a more imminent peril was to distract our attention from the weird lights. For some minutes I had been vaguely aware of something peculiar in the aspect of our compartment; yet, in my stupefied condition, I had not been able to determine just what was wrong. But full realization came to me when Stranahan, pointing upward, wide-eyed with horror, suddenly exclaimed, “Heaven preserve us, look at the ceiling!”

We all looked. The ceiling was bulging inches downward, as though the terrific pressure of the waters were already bursting the tough steel envelope of the X-111. And at the same time we observed that the deck we stood on was bulging upward, and that the bulkheads were being twisted and distorted like iron rails warped by an earthquake.

* * * * *

But now came the greatest surprise of all. “By all the saints and little devils!” burst forth the irrepressible Stranahan, pointing downward and forgetting the aspect of the bulkheads and deck. “There’s a city under the sea!”

“A city under the sea!” we echoed, in stupefied amazement. And from one corner of the room came a burst of hysterical laughter, which wavered and broke and then died out, sounding uncannily like a fiend’s derision.

“But I tell you, there is a city under the sea!” insisted Stranahan, noting the incredulous stares with which we regarded him. “The Lord strike me dead if I didn’t see its streets and houses!”

Though none of us doubted but that the Lord would indeed do as Stranahan suggested, we interpreted his remarks as mere delirious ravings, and continued to stare at him in petrified silence.

“You see, there she is!” persisted the seaman, still pointing downward regardless of our disbelief. And, crossing himself piously, he continued, in awed tones, “May the Virgin have pity on us, if that don’t look like a church!”

Stranahan’s last words had such a tone of conviction that, though our doubts were still strong, we could not forebear to look. And, after a single glance, our scepticism gave place to dumbfounded amazement. For was this not a city staring up at us from the green-golden depths? Or at least the ruins of what had been a city? In outlines wavy because of the dense, shifting waters, and yet as definite of form as reflections in a still pool, half a dozen great yellow-white temples seemed to glimmer beneath the brilliant lights, with massive columns, wide-reaching porticoes and colonnades, and gracefully curving arches and domes.

Was this but a mirage? we asked ourselves. Or were these the remains of some submerged, ancient town? Never had we heard of mirages beneath the sea--but if this were a dead city, then why these vivid lights? And, certainly, no living city could be imagined in these profound watery abysses.

Even as we wondered, we seemed to note a gradual change in our movement. We were no longer sinking; we were drifting with slow motion, almost horizontally; and just beneath us appeared to be an impenetrable but transparent dense, greenish wall, a wall that--had the idea not been too preposterous--we might almost have imagined to be of glass. Beneath this wall gleamed no lantern-bearing, fishy eyes, but the dazzling golden orbs and the smaller scattered lights shone steadily with piercing radiance; and beneath us, at a distance that may have been five hundred feet and may have been a thousand, the vaults and domes and columns of innumerable stone edifices shone palely and with sallow luster. Surely, we thought, this was some unheard-of Athens, doomed long ago by tidal wave or volcano.

Gradually, for some reason that we could not quite explain, our horizontal motion seemed to be increasing; and, caught apparently by some rapid deep-sea current, we drifted with appreciable velocity above those dim realms of green and golden. Palace after magnificent palace, many seemingly modelled by architects of old Greece, went gliding by beneath us; countless statues, tall as the buildings, pointed up at us with hands that were uncannily life-like; wide avenue after wide avenue flashed by, and one or two colossal theatres of old Grecian design; but no living thing was to be seen, or, at least, so it seemed, for though we strained our eyes, we could discern only shadows moving in those uncertain depths, only shadows and an occasional firefly light which zigzagged fitfully among the buildings and which we took to be some strange illuminated finny thing.

Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, fresh terror seized us. Perhaps it was because we realized abruptly the full eerie horror of floating thus above a city of the dead; perhaps it was that the whole unspeakable ghastliness of the adventure had again flashed upon us. Be that as it may, we began to shake and shiver once more as though in the grip of a mastering emotion, or as though obsessed by forethought of approaching disaster; and muttered prayers again were heard, and more than one silent tear was shed.

But the time for tears and prayers was over. Our motion, gradually increasing for some minutes, was suddenly accelerated as if by some gigantic prod; we seemed caught in some mighty movement of the waters, some maelstrom that whirled us about and buffeted us like a feather; a hoarse, continuous thunder dinned in our ears, and we went shooting forward with prodigious speed. Then came a violent jerk, and we found ourselves tossed pellmell to all corners of the room; then another jerk, and we were flung back again like dice shaken in a box; then still another jerk, more vehement than the others, and our terrorized minds lost track of events as our vessel lunged and heaved, then veered and stood almost on end, then began to spin round and round, like a swift gyrating top ... And in that whirling confusion our senses reeled and grew blurred, and darkness came clouding back, darkness and sleep and nothingness ...

* * * * *

[Illustration: Our searchlights made us the center of attraction for myriads of scaly things; whole schools and squadrons of fishes were gathering moth-like in the vivid illumination thrown out by our vessel ... flitting to and fro, circling and spiralling and doubling back and forth at incredible speed.]

* * * * *

##