I stepped past him and found myself gazing out over what seemed a limitless underground ocean. The light from my lantern glittered across its still surface and was lost in the distance. The waters were dark and covered with an oily scum interrupted by faintly luminous patches like algae.
"It's not as wide as it is deep," said Clagger behind me. "But to be sure, it's some fathoms to the bottom."
"How are we to get across then?" Wading was obviously impossible here.
"Don't worry yourself. There's ways of doing that easy enough. First I must test the air, though."
He had fastened his lantern to the end of his long probing pole, and he now stepped beside me with it. Slowly he extended it over the dark waters. The flame bent with some subterranean draft but remained burning brightly.
"Ah, good," said Clagger. "There's air fit for us to breathe out there. Sometimes the putrefying masses that lodge in the depths rise up and break open, releasing such noxious vapours as would suffocate you like a giant candle snuffer. It's good luck for us that such is not the case at the moment." He pulled back the pole and removed the lantern from the end. "Go back down the tunnel a couple of yards," he said, restrapping the lantern to his chest, "and on the right you'll find a section of the brickwork that's been replaced with a dirty piece of canvas. Draw it aside and bring what you find out here."
The piece of canvas at the point of which he directed me was not merely dirty, but artfully daubed with plaster and mud so as to resemble a section of the sewer passage itself. Drawing the camouflage aside, I found in the hollowed-out niche behind a small boat complete to a pair of oars resting in the brass fittings on the sides.
Tafe and I dragged the boat to the edge of the dark underground sea where Clagger stood waiting for us. He placed a loving hand on the prow of the little craft, looking for all the world like some British admiral admiring his fleet's flagship. "It got washed into the sewers," he said, "when an India clipper sank at the docks during a storm. Somehow it drifted down here where I found good employment for it. I've kept it hidden so that less cautious folk might not try their luck on yon water and find it wanting."
The boat was soon lowered into the water and one by one we cautiously took our places in it. Clagger manned the oars and pushed us away from the ledge where we had been standing. With a few strokes it was out of sight and we were surrounded by the fetid ocean on all sides.
"What happens," I asked with a little trepidation "if one of the putrid masses you spoke of breaks open and releases its fatal gas while we're crossing this body of water?"
"In that case," said Clagger, laying his weight into the oars, "you hold your breath and I row like hell." His impassive face made no show if this was meant as humorous or not. "And now, sir," he continued, "I must caution you to hold your voice in check. For I know well that sounds travel over still water with great clarity, and it behooves us to go as subtly as possible."
"Why so? Who is there to hear us?"
He looked at me reproachfully. "Do I have to remind you who they are who've made their base here in the sewers?"
The Morlocks! My heart clenched with the remembrance of them. I had been blind to the true danger of the depths through which we were roaming, so intently had my mind been focused on the object to which our pursuit was aimed. Not only were we braving the natural hazards of the underground but perhaps the malevolent scrutiny of our most implacable enemies as well. Suddenly the darkness around us seemed alive with unseen but sensed eyes taking the measure of our very inch of progress and calculating the best moment for some treacherous blow.
I barely managed to suppress my growing apprehension, not eliminating it but only pushing it into a corner of my mind. No course but this one lay before us – but to pursue it called for as much bravery as we possessed. So we sailed on, so far beneath the streets I had once blithely walked upon, moving across an uncharted sea toward an unknown destination.
At the back of the little boat Tafe sat with her head hanging over the side. Her restrained fear of the close spaces served to make the placid rowing into a rough crossing for her. I said nothing, knowing that her pride would flare into anger at any word of sympathy. Instead I turned and looked ahead to our not yet visible landing.
Suddenly she spoke. "I think something's coming up," came her voice from behind us.
"Just keep your head over the side," I said, not turning around. "I can't imagine a more fitting place in which to dispose of your last meal."
"No, you fool," said Tafe impatiently. "I mean coming up from down there."
Clagger stopped rowing. The boat rocked from side to side as I vaulted to a place next to Tafe and peered down into the inky water. A row of some dozen or more yellow lights was visible through the scum at a considerable distance below us. As I watched the lights grew larger and more distinct, indicating their gradual rise toward the surface.
"What can it be?" I asked Clagger as he appeared at my elbow.
"It looks worse even than anything I'd feared we'd encounter," he said, staring anxiously down into the water. "I'd heard rumours from some of the other toshers but I'd dismissed them as nonsense and arrant fabrications."
"What? You know what it is?"
"Yes." His voice was sepulchral – with foreboding. "The Morlocks have apparently placed a vessel for travelling underwater here to assist them in preparing for their invasion of the surface world."
The row of lights was ascending much faster toward us. "A submarine?" I said incredulously. "Such as Jules Verne imagined? The Morlocks are operating a submarine here beneath the city of London?"
"Aye," said Clagger, "that's the look of it, but I fancy we'll know for sure in a matter of a few seconds."
"The oars!" I pushed him back toward his position at the middle of the boat. "Row away!"
"Where to?" said Clagger despairingly. "Have you no eyes? That thing, whatever it is, is coming up faster than we could possibly move in any direction."
His words proved true. No sooner had he spoken them than our small craft was borne up by a swell of water, spun about, then capsized. With a shriek of expelled steam the submarine broke the surface while a churning weight of dark, filthy water pulled at my limbs and plunged me far below.
I had had time to catch only a fraction of my breath in the few chaotic moments before my immersion. The feeling of suffocation was heightened by the complete darkness – the lamp strapped to my chest was of course extinguished – and the slimy, scum-filled water pressing upon me. Oily ropes of decaying matter clung to my limbs and entwined about me as I thrashed desperately in the wake of the emergent submarine. Clumps of foul debris plastered themselves to my face, while my body's desire to fill its aching lungs with air drove my mind to sheer animal panic. I clawed and kicked at the swirling dark mass about me, not knowing whether I was scrabbling toward the water's surface or deeper below. Once my hand struck that of another person – Tafe, probably – and our fingers clutched at each other for a second before the turbulent currents tore them apart again.
Just as my mouth was about to break open in a scream, not caring whether it might be choked off under fathoms of this lightless sea, my head lifted into the air above the surface. A draft of the thick, fetid atmosphere was as welcome to me as any clear spring breeze. I gasped, fell back under the surface, then kicked myself up again. Treading water, I looked about to see what I could of the disaster's aftermath.
There was not a sign observable in the total dark of my companions Tafe and Clagger. More disheartening, I could hear nothing of them struggling in the water or calling out to locate each other or myself. The sound of my own voice was weak and quickly swallowed up in the vast area. "Tafe!" I cried. "Clagger!"