Dancers in the Sea
(Continued from page 13)
suddenly. Lieutenant Blake, smiling a fixed unnatural smile, more resembling the stenciled grimace of a mechanical puppet than of a man, had begun to divest himself of his coat. His officer's cap lay on the deck where he had thrown it. No one made a motion to stop him.
He was ready in an instant. He deliberately stepped over the emergency suit, as if not seeing it, and began to climb into the one that only a moment before had been stripped from the dead Slim. He fastened the wide rubber pants about him hurriedly as if impatient to start.
“Either insanity or sheer braggadocio,” I mentally accused. “This thing has got him!” And as the officer coolly adjusted the steel flange in the collar of his suit, my senses kept indicting “that guy hasn't got iron nerves—he hasn’t got any!” But I never said a word.
Lieutenant Blake, as if challenging my very thoughts, looked over at me and grinned reassuringly.
“Superstition!” he said, and grimaced. “Lightning never strikes twice. . . .”
I did not hear any more. I was busy helping him with the heavy boots.
As he stood on the sea ladder fumbling with the air valve in his helmet, he leaned suddenly towards me and began to speak in dry hard cadences that were strangely reminiscent of a night on a North Sea patrol when we had dropped a depth bomb, and afterwards had watched together as a turgid black oil film slowly formed on the surface of the water. The smile had left his face.
“You're in charge! . . . If I jerk the depth line twice, sharp—like this,” he illustrated with a whip motion of his right arm, “let me down slower. Three times,” his tone was rasping, “—stop. But don’t raise—not at first. I will use the regular signals only, at faster intervals—every five feet . . . and if they stop. . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Slim had a bad heart.” His tone changed — became lower-pitched, more intimate. “He should never have gone down.” He motioned for me to clamp down his visor. As the last bolt was tightened he stepped down into the sea and an instant later was lost to sight.
We stared as the waters closed over the rounded helmet and tiny bubbles began to flicker to the surface. We unreeled the line as if it were a live wire. It uncoiled, slowly, ominously.
I looked up from my watch only once. The faces of the group at the rail were drawn, cream-colored beneath dark tan. The waters seemed suddenly malignant . . . as if shrouding some evil genii in their sinister depths.
As the line showed 85 feet I stared at it transfixed. It suddenly became taut and I felt my body grow rigid. There it was—the same twitching as before, but followed by a staccato, spasmodic jerking as if a thousand demons were signaling for release. It was a call for help from the depths of the sea. Then these stopped as suddenly as they had begun. The line lay slack on the water.
We began to pull at both lines. The lowering line seemed light, one of the men said. And the depth line ran in like a kite string after the kite has broken free. Easy and gentle-like, without resistance or feel of any sort.
It came up slowly. I counted every second, split them like a track coach with a stop watch as they passed in a gray parade. It was as if I was clocking the dogged, drugged last miles of a weary marathoner. Six hundred of them—long dragging seconds—and we pulled a deflated rubber suit over the side . . . like the other.
It was probably my imagination. It seemed a white-canvased sack, only incredibly light. Perhaps it was empty. It collapsed on the deck by way of confirming my queer suspicions. That spasmodic jerking! What had that been? A struggle, no doubt, with every blow vibrating over a dancing depth line.
I remember that I was unmoved. It all seemed so natural. A splendid stage set, with the darkened waters a perfect back-curtain, and the lights low. That was perfect too—for a death scene.
I unclasped the visor and with almost the same motion stripped the helmet from the head. Lieutenant “Blake lay beneath. I distinctly remember that I was surprised. I had been so confident that the suit would be empty. I felt a vague sense of disappointment—as if the play was wrong.
I should perhaps have been delirious. I wasn't. Only curious and a bit disappointed.
It was Lieutenant Blake . . . a twisted, distorted smile identified him. But his face was livid, contused. A stain of red traced across his right cheek. He must have gashed it on the metal helmet. Perhaps he had forgotten and had tried to leap forward—leap out.
While we started, his body twitched convulsively—he gasped audibly.
Pungent rum was forced down his throat as he sputtered violently, coughed, and finally breathed regularly. He stared wildly about and raised one arm in the air. It held suspended there for a moment, his face working horribly. He seemed trying to strike out but his arm was held by some invisible force. At last it suddenly was released—flung forward in a frenzied blow and crashed cruelly on the deck.
His lips moved tremulously:
“There are people down there . . . alive!" He choked. “—alive! . . . thousands of them! . . .”
No one spoke.
Several times as he regained consciousness, he attempted to depict what he had seen, but all he could do was repeat in a flat, faintly articulate monotone “. . . thousands of them . . . living people . . . people! . . . thousands of them . . . alive! . . .”
Then occurred an occult perversion, a phenomenon which belongs rightfully in the realm of the metaphysical. I cannot explain it. It was not delirium, but curiosity that was tormenting me—unreasoning, staggering, deadly curiosity—as to what there was . . . down there on the floor of the sea.
“I am going down,” I announced.
It was not my own voice. The words echoed from afar off.
“You are crazy, Bill!” The others called back to me from a great distance.
“Perhaps, but at least I'll know what to expect . . . now that Blake has seen them, and when . . . and . . .”
I carefully stepped over the suit that Lieutenant Blake and the dead Slim had used and motioned for the other. I was not superstitious.
There seemed nothing else to do. I was now in command, and the treasure—it lured like a mountain of gold—was just beneath us. My resolve seemed perfectly natural.
A tranquility, a gradual slowing down of life processes, exhilarated me. I—alone—was moving in a world that had slowed down almost to a halt. Someone had to go, I reasoned logically.
It was really easier than waiting on the deck staring at the water. And the water did not seem dark, nor cold. It suddenly looked warm, almost inviting. It fascinated me.
“The same signals,” I directed. And then a queer thought, an eerie facetiousness seared my brain. I laughed out loud.
“You don’t suppose they’ve caught on, do you? To our signals . . . I mean.” I continued to laugh at my jest as the others looked blank. They had not seen the joke.
I felt warm all over, ecstatic, glowing. I had been cold only a few minutes before.
As I was lowered by degrees I could feel the air pressure increase. It seemed oppressively heavy. I opened the valve a little. It was all right now.
At first I could discern nothing. The opaque darkness of the water shut off everything. Then I could see a short ways ahead. Afterwards, as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I could perceive distances. That was all.
I went down . . . down . . . down. I thought I must be near the bottom of the sea . . . when . . . a gyrating shadow . . . a wraithy, giant body, long and thin, loomed beside me. slowly not five yards away, waving grotesque, disjointed arms and legs, rythmically, in a gibberish cadence—like a wooden monkey on a stick.
Others in distorted and freakish positions danced about me.
I was chill. My body seemed numb. Cold drops of moisture froze to my forehead, trickled down into my eyes. The helmet sheathing seemed cold and damp.
I was conscious, however,—tragically conscious, of the sargasso sea of bodies—human bodies—which had sprouted magically about me. I seemed to be slipping slowly, softly, down into their midst.
A wraithy arm reached out and brushed across my visor. I could feel the clammy impact through the metal
