CHAPTER XII

The Submergence

The arrival of Stranahan, of course, had its effect. Not only did he interrupt my conversation with Aelios at a crucial point, but he made it impossible for the discussion to take a personal turn. I realized, to be sure, that he was actuated by motives of good fellowship, but I felt that he exhibited remarkably poor sense; and I am afraid that I displayed not a little of my displeasure in the forced welcome that I frowned upon the intruder. But Stranahan appeared to be afflicted with no foolish sensitiveness; and, having decided to join us, he seemed not to notice the frozen reception I accorded him.

And like one determined to see things through to the end, he remained resolutely with us. He seemed scarcely discouraged by his limited knowledge of the language, which made him a total stranger to most of what we were saying; and for a good part of our conversation, he sat by in gaping ignorance, venturing an occasional remark with such poor display of grammar and pronunciation that I could only smile.

Yet our discussion was so engrossing that for minutes at a time I quite forgot the existence of Stranahan. Even the bright sparkling eyes of Aelios had for the moment no more than an impersonal interest for me, for I found myself making a discovery so strange, so amazing and so utterly unprecedented as to upset my conception of human history.

“Can this really be Atlantis?” I heard myself inquiring, once the disturbance created by Stranahan’s arrival had subsided. “Can this really be the famous lost Atlantis?”

“The lost Atlantis?” repeated Aelios, looking perplexed. “I didn’t know there was any lost Atlantis.”

I explained as briefly as possible the legend of the ancient continent that was said to have sunk beneath the sea. “If there’s any truth in the story, that was one of the greatest disasters in history,” I remarked, trying to lend importance to what I felt to be but the flimsiest of myths.

“Disaster!” echoed Aelios, her perplexity deepening. “Disaster! This is the first time I ever heard any one call the submergence a disaster!”

“Do you mean, then, that there actually was a submergence?” I demanded. “That a whole continent sank beneath the waves?”

“Why, of course!” she exclaimed, astonished at so self-evident a question. “How else do you think we got here beneath the sea?” And she pointed significantly to the great greenish roof and the bright, golden orbs above us, while into her eyes came a wonderfully sweet, indulgent light, as into the eyes of one who delights to teach children the obvious.

“Where did you suppose we could be now,” she continued, “except in Archeon, the Capital of Atlantis?”

It was at this point that Stranahan thought it time to let himself be heard. He drew his lips far apart as if to speak, uttered an inarticulate syllable or two, and then stopped abruptly short, as though unable to frame the desired words.

“What is it, my friend?” asked Aelios, turning to Stranahan with a gracious smile. But since Stranahan could only gape idiotically in reply, I thought it my duty to answer for him.

“What I cannot understand,” I said, returning to the question that had been puzzling me most of all, “is that you say there was a submergence, and yet seem to think it was not a disaster. Surely, if the whole continent of Atlantis was lost--”

“What makes you think the whole continent was lost?” demanded Aelios, a quizzical, almost amused light in her great blue eyes. “Why, the better part of Atlantis is safe here beneath the sea!”

“Safe here beneath the sea?” I cried, in growing confusion. “Why, how is that possible?”

“That is a long story,” she started to explain. “It goes back very far, thousands of years, in fact--”

“And cannot you tell me that story?” I proposed, eagerly. “Cannot you tell me from the beginning? Remember, I am a stranger here and find everything very confusing. What is this Atlantis of yours? And how old is it? And how large? And how did it come to be submerged? And how does it happen that you are living here now beneath the ocean?”

“Whole volumes have been written in answer to those questions,” declared Aelios, with a winning smile. “But I’ll try to explain everything as best I can.” And she paused momentarily, while Stranahan craned his long neck far forward, as if to take in all that she had to say.

“It is perhaps the most romantic tale in history,” she resumed, speaking almost with exaltation, while her eyes took on a far-away dreamy look that I thought most becoming, and her upper lip twitched with the same sympathetic quivering I had noted before. “Atlantis is one of the most ancient republics in the world, and at one time was the most populous and powerful of all countries. Our history goes back more than seven thousand years, four thousand above the sea and three thousand beneath--four thousand years of growth, tumult and conquest, and three thousand years of maturity and peace. At a time when Egypt and Babylonia were still unheard of, our engineers reared monuments more massive than the pyramids; and when Babylonia and Egypt were in the full pride of their renown our people regarded them contemptuously as the merest barbarian tribes. Our accomplishments were to them what theirs were to the unclothed blacks of the south; and our country surpassed theirs as a marble palace surpasses a clay hut.”

* * * * *

“But what was the precise location of your country? And how large was it?” I interposed.

“It was in an isolated position a full day’s sailing west of the Pillars of Hercules. As for its size, it was large, and yet not overwhelmingly so; a swift runner might have traveled around it between full moon and full moon. But today you might took vainly for its plains and snow-tipped mountains, for above all but its highest peaks, the unbroken waters foam and toss.”

Aelios paused momentarily, and a melancholy reminiscent light came into her eyes, while her long, lithe fingers toyed absently with the folds of her lavender gown.

“Ah, how sad!” I could not forebear murmuring. “What a ghastly tragedy!”

“No, not a tragedy,” she quickly denied, regarding me again with a peculiar surprise that I could not understand. “There is no tragedy in the history of Atlantis, though of course there might have been.”

“No tragedy?” I cried, wondering vaguely if Aelios could be trying to make sport of me. “Is it not tragedy for a whole great country to be submerged?”

“It may be, or again it may not be,” she replied, enigmatically. “In this case, it was not.”

Noting my quizzical silence, she continued, with a reassuring smile, “No doubt you will find this difficult to understand. In your world above seas, conditions are perhaps very different from those of old Atlantis. Certainly, you are spared the perils which we faced, and which compelled us to submerge our continent.”

“Compelled you to submerge your continent?” I repeated, growing more amazed each instant. “Do you mean to say you submerged it deliberately?”

“Yes. How else?” she returned, in matter-of-fact tones. “The Submergence--or the Deliverance, as it is sometimes called--was the most fortunate event in our history. We celebrate it annually at our great festival, the Festival of the Good Destruction.”

Again she paused, as if uncertain how to proceed, while I was forced to join Stranahan in a bewildered silence.

“In order to make things clear,” she continued at length, with upper lip still fluttering and eyes that smiled with kindly good will, “I suppose I will have to describe Atlantis as it was in the old days, the days before the flood. Thirty-one hundred years ago, or at the time when the Submergence was first proposed, we were in possession of secrets which the upper world has perhaps not rediscovered even today. I will not speak of our art, literature and philosophy, which, though advanced for their day, were incomparably inferior to what we have since produced; it was in scientific spheres that our progress was most pronounced. From the beginning, our science was a strangely lopsided growth; it was most developed on the purely material side; and while it could tell us how to compute a comet’s weight and enabled us to communicate with the people of Mars, still on the whole it was concerned with such practical questions as how to produce food artificially or how to utilize new sources of energy. And in these directions it was amazingly efficient. We had long passed the stage, for example, when we needed to rely upon steam, gasoline or electricity to run our motors or to carry us over the ground or through the air; we had mastered the life-secret of matter itself, and by means of the energy within the atoms could produce power equal to that of a tornado or of a volcanic eruption.”

“Marvelous!” I exclaimed, enthusiastically. “Marvelous! What magnificent opportunities that gave you!”

“Yes, that was just the trouble,” pursued Aelios, the trace of a frown darkening her lovely cheeks and eyes. “There are some opportunities that no men should have. What would be the gain in giving a wasp the power of a bull? It was not a mere coincidence, for example, that the decline of art was simultaneous with the rise of science. After thousands of years in which the pursuit of the beautiful had been one of the objects of life, men began to be bewildered by the idea of their conquest over matter; they came to apply themselves to the construction of huge and intricate machines, of towering but unsightly piles of masonry, of swift means of locomotion and of unique and elaborate systems of amusement. And at the same time they devoted themselves extensively to destruction. Not to the destruction of their own monstrous contrivances, alas! but to the undermining of human happiness and human life. In our isolated position, we had had comparatively little intercourse for centuries with other lands; but now that we possessed lightning means of travel and lightning weapons of aggression, our citizens began to swoop down occasionally upon a foreign cast, picking a quarrel with the people and finding some excuse for smiting thousands dead. At first, of course, our enemies had no means of retaliation, but it was certain that in the end they would have imitated our methods and singed us with our own fire.”

“And is that what actually happened?” I asked, fancying I saw a trace of light at last. “Is that why you had to submerge your land?”

“No, that is not what happened,” said Aelios, smiling at my naïveté, while a half-suppressed yawn from Stranahan gave her but little encouragement to continue. “Not all our people were savages, and not all approved of our policy of international murder; nor were all content to see art and beauty trodden down by the twin hoofs of mechanism and multiple production. Of course, the protestants were at first mere voices wailing against the waves, and more than one was jeered as a maniac; but the protest continued and grew through many decades; and though there were thousands that continued to appraise the cities by their size and scientific accomplishment by its deadliness, the time came when the party of rebellion was almost as numerous as the conservatives or ‘Respectables,’ and when the limitation of mechanical power became an issue that threatened the very life of the State.

“I will not trouble you with the details of that struggle, or with the powerful cause made out by the enemies of Super-Science--for of this you shall hear more later. For the present it is sufficient to state that the climax arrived in the year 56 B. S.----”

“What does B. S. mean?” I interrupted.

“Before the Submergence, of course!” explained Aelios, with a slight frown that instantly made way for a broad and glowing smile.

“It was in the year 56,” she proceeded, “that the Agripides ministry came into office. Following the open insurrection of beauty-lovers against the ‘Respectables,’ the Anti-Mechanism party triumphed in a general election; and Agripides, known by his friends as ‘Savior of the World’ and by his foes as the ‘City-Wrecker,’ began to carry out the revolutionary policies he had been advocating for years.

“These policies, which were perhaps the most daring ever conceived by the human mind, contemplated nothing less than the overthrow of existing civilization and the substitution of something better suited to endure. It was Agripides’ contention--and a contention established by the researches of the very scientists he opposed--that the State of Atlantis, under current conditions, had a potential life of not more than five hundred years; that it was burning away its energies with profligate abandon, and would soon droop withering and exhausted into permanent decay. Its best human material was being used up and cast aside like so much straw; its best social energies were being diverted into wasteful and even poisonous channels; its too-rapid scientific progress was imposing a wrenching strain upon the civilized mind and institutions. There was only one remedy, other than the natural one of oblivion and death; and that remedy was in a complete metamorphosis, a change such as the caterpillar undergoes when it enters the chrysalis, a transformation into an environment of such repose that society might have time to recover from its overgrowth and to evolve along quiet and peaceful lines.”

* * * * *

Another half-unconscious yawn from Stranahan imposed a brief interruption at this point; but Aelios had now thoroughly warmed to her theme; and, disregarding Stranahan’s rudeness, she continued almost without delay.

“The proposal which Agripides had to make, and which he had been advocating eloquently for years, was one that caused even the liberal-minded to gasp and shake their heads doubtfully. He declared, in a word, that Atlantis was not sufficiently isolated and enisled; that it would never be safe while exposed to the tides of commerce and worldly affairs; that the only rational course was for it first to destroy whatever was noxious within itself, and then to prevent further contamination by walling itself off completely from the rest of the planet. And since no sea however wide and no fortress however strong would be efficacious in warding off the hordes of mankind, the one possible plan would be to go where no men could follow; to seal Atlantis up hermetically in an air-tight case--in other words, to sink the whole island to the bottom of the sea!”

“Good Lord!” I exclaimed, horrified at so strange a suggestion. “Sounds just like a lunatic’s ravings!”

“No, quite the opposite,” replied Aelios, with an indulgent smile. “I see you don’t understand at all. Agripides was not a lunatic; he was the greatest man that ever lived.”

“I thought he must be either a madman or a genius,” I returned, dryly.

“Look, I’ll show you!” she flung out, almost as a challenge, since I did not seem convinced of her hero’s greatness. And rising hurriedly and flitting a dozen paces down the colonnade, she pointed to a life-sized marble bust on a panel between the columns. “See! That is Agripides! Does that look like the face of a lunatic?”

Hastily I had followed Aelios, with Stranahan at my heels; and he joined me in surveying the bust with a show of interest, though his puzzled expression showed that he did not know and much less cared who Agripides may have been. “The glorious saints have mercy on us, if he hasn’t a beard like a goat!” was his one and only comment. But I did not deign to reply, and fixed my eyes sternly and appraisingly upon the countenance of Agripides. The hair and beard were perhaps a little long, I thought, unconsciously agreeing with Stranahan; but the features were the most striking I had ever seen in any human being. Like many of the faces which have come down to us from classical times, this countenance combined intellect and beauty to a singular degree. The brow was broad, as in the representations of Homer, but it also rose to a majestic dominance; the eyes were large and alert, the lips thin and compressed, the cheeks long and firmly modelled, while the features were furrowed with deep lines of sympathy that reminded me of Lincoln, and at the same time were marked with a wistful, dreamy expression that contrasted strangely with a savage, almost tigerish determination more implied than clearly graven on the even contours of the face.

“Agripides was a remarkable orator, and at the same time a writer of force,” stated Aelios, as we returned to our seats. “Hundreds of his essays and addresses have been preserved, and they show such brilliance, vehemence, and wit, and at the same time such clarity and logic of presentation, that it is little wonder that he converted all Atlantis to his way of thinking. Or perhaps it would not be fair to say that he converted all Atlantis--there was plenty of wordy opposition to his schemes, as well as several little armed revolts and insurrections that had to be suppressed. But Agripides was not a man to be easily daunted, and in spite of the strenuous objections of the ‘Respectables,’ the year 49 saw the publication of his complete plans for the Submergence.

“Those plans were more daring than the worst enemies of Agripides could have anticipated. He proposed, in a word, to cover a large part of Atlantis with an enormous glass wall, reaching like an artificial sky, hundreds of feet above ground, and thick enough to withstand the pressure of unthinkable tons of water. Near the base of this wall should be two great valves, one through which the ocean might be admitted into a broad canal or artificial river, and a second (at the opposite end of Atlantis) through which the waters might be forced out again by means of gigantic intra-atomic pumps. I need not mention, of course, that deep wells and distilled sea water would serve for domestic and drinking purposes; that decomposed water would provide sufficient oxygen for breathing; and that artificial sunlight, synthesized chemically so as to produce the life-giving elements of the original, would not only supply illumination but would support vegetation and human life as well.”

“Yes, yes, that is all very good,” said I, feeling that Aelios had not yet touched upon the most essential fact of all. “But how did Agripides propose to sink the island beneath the sea?”

“That is a difficult question,” she murmured, with a smile that was worth more to me than volumes of knowledge. “It involves technical questions of engineering with which, I must confess, I am very poorly acquainted. But, as I understand it, what Agripides proposed was that enormous tank be buried under the sea bottom far to the west of Atlantis, and that, at a given signal, the water should be raised to boiling point by an application of intra-atomic heat. The resulting tons of steam, in their fury to escape, would create an explosion that would burst the very floor of the sea; in one direction there would be a gigantic upheaval, and a lifting of the ocean bed; and in another direction, by way of reaction, there would be a sinking of the ocean bottom in an effort of the strata not directly affected, to fill in the gap left by those displaced. And while a whole vast area would rise thousands of feet (although not to the level of the water), another area would be forced downward an equal distance; and that area, which would be of enormous extent, would include the island of Atlantis. To use a crude illustration, one may think of a common plank, balanced on its center, of which one end cannot be tilted upward without causing the other end to slant down; and one may imagine Atlantis as reposing on the lower slope of such a plank.”

* * * * *

“But that is all mere theory,” I pointed out. “Certainly, Agripides wouldn’t dare to sink the island merely on the basis of such unproved calculations.”

“Oh, no, of course not. The computations were all verified by actual experiment. With the aid of two accomplished engineers, Agripides made a small model of the continent and the surrounding ocean, accurately reproducing every detail; and, having stimulated an explosion under the proper conditions, he found that the miniature island sank precisely as he expected the real island to do.”

“Even so,” I argued, “would not the explosion have shattered the entire crust of the earth? And would not the great glass dome have been split and ruined even if the ground beneath it remained firm?”

“All that was duly provided for,” explained Aelios. “The submergence was to be so gradual as to require several hours; and since the explosion was to occur under the sea rather than under the island itself, it would shatter the crust of the earth only in remote localities, and the shock would not be severe enough to affect the glass wall. In other words--to make another comparison--the island was to be like a ship that sinks in its entirety after striking the reefs, although only the prow is damaged and the rest remains uninjured.”

“Yes, I understand perfectly,” said I, recalling my recent experiences in the X-111. “But even assuming that the experiment was perfectly safe, how did Agripides ever persuade the people to sink their homes beneath the sea?”

“It was precisely there that he proved his greatness,” said Aelios, casting an admiring glance in the direction of Agripides’ statue. “Well knowing that imagination is the most powerful force in human life, he began to work upon the imagination of the masses to show the dangers of civilization. Simultaneously with the publication of his plans for the Submergence, he opened to the public an enormous exhibition palace in which he presented the most ghastly display in history. With the vision of the social philosopher and the intuition of the prophet, he had constructed in miniature the Atlantis of the future as he conceived it would be--and no man could gaze upon that Atlantis without heartily praying for the Submergence. The landscape had been blasted, muddied and made black, and scarcely a green leaf could be seen; steel towers and smokestacks dotted the island until it looked like a range of artificial hills; great wheels and chains whirled and rattled in the dark interiors of the buildings, and to each wheel and chain a man was tied; and the huge engines and motors were fed with the blood of men, and watered with their tears. Innumerable multitudes--not only of men but of women, and of sickly, pinch-faced children--were bound as slaves to the machines, and responded to automatic orders that the machines flashed forth; and after they had served long and their limbs were growing frail, they were crushed and mangled by the very masters they had served, or else were cast out to perish like frost-bitten flies. But the great wheels never ceased to turn or the levers to clatter, and their steel jaws gnashed the gouged-out hearts and brains of men, and their dust and cinders clouded the fields and forests, and their poison fumes invaded the lungs of the people, blunting their minds and making them droop and die by the million.”

“What a hideous picture!” I cried, with a shudder. “But certainly, certainly it was an exaggeration!”

“No, Agripides had no need to exaggerate. He merely showed the logical advance upon existing advances. But this was the least grewsome of the exhibits. One half of the display, which he entitled ‘The Triumph of Science,’ was devoted to the supreme horror. Here again he depicted artificial landscapes and many-towered cities; but the wheels of those cities were not revolving, though smoke was indeed in the air. At first sight, they might hardly have been recognized as cities at all; they were really little more than chaotic heaps of iron and stone; many of the buildings had been blasted to fragments, some had toppled over, others were mere mangled frameworks of steel. Scarcely more than an isolated wall remained standing here and there to show that this had been the home of men; but of the inhabitants themselves there was indeed an occasional sign: here one was futilely gasping for breath, writhing on the ground like a tormented worm; there one was groping crazily through the ruins, with torn breast and blinded eyes; yonder a family group was lying sprawled at all angles, with pale faces convulsed with their last agony.

“But had one looked for the source of the destruction, one would not easily have found it--except that far above, so remote as scarcely to be visible, a fleet of mosquito-like flying craft were buzzing on their way like stealthy marauders.”

Aelios paused, a deep seriousness darkening her fair features; and as I sat there regarding her in silence, I could not but reflect what unspeakable distances separated the bloody picture she described from the enchanting scenes among which she dwelt.

* * * * *

“Naturally,” she continued, “the people were not captivated with the thought of the future depicted by Agripides. And, Agripides, acting at the psychological moment when all Atlantis was most aroused, convened the National Assembly, and polled a majority of--three to one in favor of the Submergence! This majority being confirmed by a referendum of the people, the great leader took immediate steps toward carrying out his revolutionary project.

“Nearly forty-eight years were consumed in the necessary preliminaries, and in that time Atlantis found itself forced halfway toward the realization of Agripides’ direct prophecies. The island of Antiles, a small republic located far to westward, had spied out the aggressive schemes of the Atlantean military experts, and enlarging upon them, had manufactured a fleet of poison-bearing aircraft capable of smiting whole cities with death and ruin. That they were aimed for a contemplated conflict with Atlantis there could be not a doubt; that such a conflict could not be averted by diplomacy was too self-evident to require demonstration; and that there was no resisting the destructive airships was generally, although unofficially, admitted. Conceivably, it was the dread of imminent disaster that restrained the minds of the people from vacillating at the last moment and that brought the plans of Agripides to their triumphant issue.

“Agripides, unfortunately, did not survive to see the consummation of his plans. Such a happiness was more than he had hoped for; the years were already heavy upon him when his revolutionary ideas first won approval. But, dying peacefully at an advanced age in the year 15 B. S., he yet lived long enough to supervise the more important details of the project and to be assured of its eventual success.

“In accordance with Agripides’ directions, a reinforced glass wall many layers thick was erected over the most picturesque part of Atlantis, for it was agreed that the rest (which included the site of many cities) was not worth saving. I shall not describe the steps taken to insure the health and comfort of the people after the Submergence, to rear elegant palaces and mansions, to duplicate the sunlight and to produce food chemically; I shall not even dwell upon the Good Destruction, except to say that all save the most essential of power-driven tools were piled up in the doomed part of the island, to be buried on the day of the Submergence together with the towers of the deserted cities. But what I must mention--and this is most important--is that not all our people were content to be submerged; that about one-third, irreconcilable to the last, emigrated eastward in a great body a few months before the Submergence. It was this that made us most sad when Agripides’ plans were fulfilled and we sank at last to the bottom of the sea.”

“Have you ever heard what happened to them?” I inquired, marveling at this extraordinary migration.

“No, how could we? We have never since established communication with the earth. But I was thinking that perhaps you, who are from the upper world, could give us some tidings of our lost fellow men.”

“I am not sure but that I can,” I replied, slowly, thinking of the ancient Greeks and their striking resemblances to the Atlanteans and wondering whether the immigrants from the sunken island might not have been among the original settlers of Athens and Corinth.

And then, recalling the mystery of the “Telegonus,” that powerful lost Homeric epic, I perceived a possible clue. “Tell me,” I asked, though the question was apparently irrelevant, “what do you know about Homer?”

“Homer?” she echoed. And then, with the ease of perfect familiarity, “Why, Homer was one of the greatest poets we know of--almost equal to the best that have arisen since the Good Destruction. He lived at about the time of the Submergence in a country far to the East, with which we had trade relations in spite of its half barbarous condition. It was, in a way, a sort of dependency, a ward of Atlantis; and it was from us that its people derived their alphabet as well as much of their language and many of their institutions. Possibly it was there that the Atlantean migrants settled.”

“Ah, I see,” said I, with a flash of understanding. “Then you mean--”

But before I could utter another word, interruption came from an unexpected quarter. And with a jolt I returned from ancient Atlantis to the realities of my own life. “Hello, boys! Hello! Hello! There they are, there they are!” came in loud familiar tones from our rear, followed by a salvo of cheers; and before Stranahan and I could quite realize what was happening, we felt our hands grasped in a multitude of hands, and found ourselves surrounded by dozens, literally dozens, of well known faces. The first I recognized was that of Captain Gavison, who grinned happily in welcome; then I distinguished one after one the faces of my fellow seamen, apparently all of them, and all of them talking, laughing, crowding about, slapping us on the back, and shouting out greetings in tumultuous chorus.

* * * * *

[Illustration: ... although perhaps five hundred feet in length, it was as much like a great statue as like a building; it had none of those features common in edifices for the shelter of man and his works, but seemed to have been erected exclusively as a piece of art. Its form was that of a woman, a woman reclining at full length ...]

* * * * *

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