'Really?' Camilla's voice conveyed surprise and she added despondently, 'It seems as though it was at least a week.'
'I am a fasting man,' declared Vladimir, 'and would eat any old kipper that these so loathsome people can provide.'
Sally sighed. 'Need we go yet? There is our picnic lunch still that we've never had time even to think of eating. I'm so dead beat that I could drop. Can't we sleep here through the night?'
'Sorry m'dear,' the McKay laid his hand gently on her arm, 'I'm afraid we can't. Heaven alone knows what really happened to us but, as I see it, the sphere got caught in some sort of trawl and was dragged among these people's catch through a succession of locks which prevent this place being flooded. Anyhow, at any moment some flood gate may open and disgorge another haul. The crowd on the quay are probably sitting waiting for their next meal to arrive. If we remain here we may get caught in the sphere again—only next time, owing to the hole we've made in it—we'll all be drowned for certain.'
'The McKay is right,' urged Count Axel, 'and right too in his theory about the manner of our arrival here. Do you remember how gently we came to rest each time we sank to a lower level. We were probably falling down some deep, narrow shafts in which the catch of fish was packed so tightly together that those under us acted like a feather bed as we approached the bottom. Our brief sideways movements were perhaps when we were being dragged through tunnels which form the actual locks beyond each of which the pressure of water above lessens.'
'These people look so revolting,' demurred Camilla. 'It seems absurd in the face of what we've gone through—but somehow I'd much rather stay in the old sphere a bit longer.'
'We daren't risk it,' the McKay insisted. 'We'd have to abandon ship in any case in a few hours when our food and drink runs out, even if there were no danger of being engulfed by another mass of fish. I don't want to be unkind but just imagine that is going to happen in above five minutes' time and that as the water gushes up through the opening we've made, an octopus reaches in one of his tentacles to get you.'
'You brute! aren't things bad enough?' murmured Sally.
'No, honestly—however doubtful the future looks it will be a better bet once we're out of this and up on the wharf.'
The Doctor nodded. 'The Herr Kapitan speaks sense Frau-lein and although these people are primitive beyond belief they may prove hospitable. One thing is certain—they will be more frightened of us than we of them.'
Sally looked at Camilla, who nodded faintly. 'All right,' she said, 'do as you wish,' and so the matter was agreed.
A hasty meal was made, to keep up their strength, of half the picnic lunch. The remaining torches were distributed and every tool or item which might possibly be of use later, apportioned out amongst them.
The McKay still had the automatic; four bullets remained in it and he reloaded to capacity from Bozo's only spare clip, so that he had eight in the magazine and one in the chamber with a last reload of a further three in his pocket.
He picked up a three-foot steel bar with a big joint at its ■2nd from the dump at the back of the sphere as an additional weapon. The others, including the girls, armed themselves with suitable pieces of the machinery which had been
removed from the bottom of the sphere in such desperate
haste.
'Ready?' asked the McKay.
A murmur of assent went up.
'All right then,' he grinned for the first time since he had left the ship; 'it's just on midnight and a very appropriate hour to step ashore in an unknown land like this. Come on, help me through the hole some of you.'
Legs foremost they pushed him through and his feet splashed into the shallow water. Immediately he was standing upright they passed through his pistol, torch and steel bar. He thrust the latter through his braces like an awkward blunt sword, and began at once to take closer stock of his surroundings.
The torch showed him that they were in a lofty cavern— the roof was just visible. The wall opposite the quay reached sheer up to it—the extremities on either hand he could not see; he turned the beam on the quay.
It was of solid, well-built, even masonry and, above it, he saw at once that, whether they were blind or not, some sense had warned the half-men that he had left the sphere. Every one of the grey-white mob had risen and was staring at him with pale, blank, apparently sightless eyes.
'Hello there!' he called, waving the hand that held the torch in greeting, and holding his pistol ready with the other.
The response was instantaneous. Countless shrill voices broke into piercing cries, a thousand arms lifted—and a thousand stones were hurled in the direction of the sphere.
17
The Kingdom of the Damned
If those hundreds of nude grey-white figures on the quayside had been able to see the thing at which they aimed their missiles the McKay would never have survived that moment. It was too late for him to attempt wriggling back through the bottom of the sphere. He could only slip to his knee beside the undercarriage and fling his arms above his head.
The stones, so wildly thrown by the blind sub-humans, came whizzing down for fifty feet all round him. Half a hundred clanged on the bathysphere and, for a moment, it rang under them like some huge gong. The shallow water about it was churned to splashing wavelets as the missiles clattered on the harbour floor but the McKay, partly protected by the under carriage, was only hit by half a dozen.
One large one landed on his elbow and gave him momentary but exquisite pain, another caught him on the thigh. The rest were smaller and bounded off his body like a series of half-spent blows.
Immediately the hail of stones had ceased he sprang to his feet and, before the submen had time to follow up their assault, thrust his head and arms inside the sphere.
'Haul me in—quick!' he cried.
Willing hands grabbed at his shoulders and he wriggled violently. An irregular shower of stones began to fall again, but after a moment's tussle, he was pulled into safety.
'By Jove! That was a narrow squeak,' he panted as soon as he could speak. 'If those brutes weren't blind they would have pounded me to pulp.'
'My dear—are you hurt?' Sally put her arm round his t.f.a.—h 225
shoulders anxiously. The din from the stones ringing on the sphere was so great now its bottom was open that she had to shout to make herself heard.
'They got me on the elbow and the thigh, but it's nothing much,' he shouted back. 'Now listen—all of you. We've proved them hostile so we've got to make a plan of attack.'
The clamour lessened. Evidently some sense told the submen that their unseen enemy had escaped.
'Oh, can't we stay here,' Camilla pleaded, 'anyhow for a bit.'
'No, that's impossible. We'll only be trapped or driven out eventually by starvation. We've got to establish ourselves on that quay, somehow, and as soon as possible.'
Nicky was holding a torch to one of the portholes and peering out; 'There seem to be such hundreds of them,' he said in a low scared voice.
'Yes,' the McKay agreed. 'Their numbers are difficult to estimate with no more light than the beam of a torch—but they're packed so tightly that I should think there must be fully a thousand on the quay. What are they doing now?'
'Crouching again in a great huddle just as they were before you went outside. They're gibbering like mad too— as if they were scared to death—you can hear them if you listen.'