Who were these marksmen in the boats? And from where had they come to be down here? As baffling as these mysteries were to me, I was overjoyed to see them, if only to glimpse once more the familiar outlines of human faces. So intent was I upon watching their encircling hunt of the remaining Morlocks that I was reminded of the submarine's sinking only when the water washed across my feet. I hurriedly scrambled to the small section of the vessel that was not yet under the surface of the water and began shouting and beating on the metal of the fin to which I held in order to attract the attention of the men in the boats.
A bullet clanged upon the fin just over my head to show that I had indeed caught one of their number's eye. More shots followed, ringing upon the submarine's hull around me. They had mistaken me for one of the Morlocks, I realised with a dismayed horror. The noise of their rifle fire drowned out my calls to them. Their torches were still too far away to illumine me as a target, but the accuracy of their shots would soon improve as they rowed closer.
The boats were approaching from all directions, so that there was no safety on either side of the large fin upon the base of which I huddled. A dark coldness washed against me as this last section of the hull slid under the water. If I clung to the submarine I would drown – if I let go and swam, I would be shot by the hunters in the boats.
My mind froze between these two grisly choices, but my body clung with animal tenacity to life. The water came across my chest where I had thrust Excalibur inside my shirt. My fingers locked with death-like rigidity to the edge of the fin while my lungs sucked in what would be my life's last few breaths.
The fastest of the boats came gliding to within a yard of my head as I held it above the water's chill surface. By the light of their torches I saw the gleaming metal barrel of the rifle point down toward me. So it's death by bullet, I thought with unnatural lucidity and closed my eyes as I heard the click of the hammer pulled back.
"Wait! For God's sake, don't shoot!"
I heard the voice crying and thought I had gone mad, for it was Tafe's voice. I opened my eyes and saw her in the boat's prow, pushing aside the man with the rifle and reaching for me, just as the submarine lurched beneath me and sank, pulling me with it away from the light and down into the dark and unrelenting cold.
8
"Well, Hocker, we all thought we'd just about lost you that time. How do you feel?"
My eyes opened wide, letting light and consciousness drain away the last clinging dregs of sleep. For some reason I had been dreaming about a chess game played in a vista of ruins… No matter. The fantasy ebbed, replaced by the even more bizarre reality I was in. I focused on Clagger's kind, ruddy face and nodded. "I'm doing all right," I said, and raised myself on my elbows. I was lying in the middle of a large bed. "Where's Tafe?"
"Somewhere about here," said Clagger, "getting dry. Or as dry as one can in these clammy regions. You were well under, you know, when Tafe jumped in to fetch you out. Said she had the damnedest time prying your fingers loose from that thing."
The memory of the submarine and the dark, enclosing water came spilling back into my mind. So I had been spared that death… for what? Another even worse? An overwhelming fatigue swept through my body and my thoughts were paralysed with a deep, foreboding dread of the future and all it might hold. Hope was born in the sunlight upon the Earth's surface; down here in the gloomy bowels of rock and muck it died.
My dismal meditation was broken by Clagger. "Come on, then," he said. "Put on your clothes and let's be about our business. I fancy there's quite a few questions you'd like to ask. To throw a little light in the darkness, that is to say. What? None at all?" He tossed my clothes – dried and mended by some unknown agency – across the foot of the bed.
"Just wait a few seconds," I snapped somewhat irritably. "I'll have questions enough for you, though what bloody good the information will do is beyond me at the moment."
While I dressed I cast an ill-tempered eye over this chamber in which I found myself. It held the aspect of what can only be described as decayed opulence. The bed itself where I had lain recovering a measure of my strength was little more than a sagging heap of brocades and other fancy materials, now tattered and soiled with countless years of use and neglect. The silk covering of the pillows, made thin with wear, was all split and water-stained. Over sections of the dark stone walls were hung heavy embroidered draperies, but these too were rotted away by Time. Their torn centres sagged to the floor like the slack skin of old men.
Over everything was the inescapable feel of dampness and rot, as though the vapours of the sewers had penetrated through every atom of things down here. My own skin now felt like that, undergoing a sewer-change down into my bones. I shuddered involuntarily as I drew my clothes, really only relatively dry, over my limbs. What awful metamorphosis would overtake me if I didn't soon return to the surface world's light?
Clagger was still waiting for me. "What place is this?" I said. "I take it that this is the region to which you meant to guide us, as you show little anxiety about being here." For the moment I laid aside the question of how he and Tafe had escaped drowning in the underground ocean. That was simply another piece of my ignorance to be filled in.
"This is it indeed." said Clagger, nodding in vigorous assent. "And not many a tosher could have found it, either. For of all of them that have heard of it, only a few would know the way."
"I'm well convinced of your knowledge." The old sewer hunter's boasting was becoming tiresome to me. "But still… what is this place?" The old man's grey eyebrows arched with the importance of the revelation. "None other," he intoned, "than that known as the Lost Coin World."
"Never heard of it."
"Your ignorance is a pity, then, and none the less either for being shared by all those who have never trod the sewers' paths. Even the greenest boy fumbling under the street gratings for a dropped shilling has heard of this place."
I drew on my boots and stood up. The damp mound of my bed sighed like a gratefully released animal. "Since a certain evening some time ago," I said, "when I first talked with our mutual friend Dr. Ambrose, the appalling extent of my ignorance has regularly been revealed to me. The only other fact with which I've become as well acquainted is the way that anyone who knows anything will go to any length to spin it out into a mystery."
"Aye, you're right enough about that." He absorbed the comment without any recognition that it could have been directed at him. "It took a fair amount of persistence, I can tell you, to get these people down here to tell me something of themselves. I wasn't just asking out of idle curiosity, either, mind you. It was all for the highest of scientific and historical purposes that I wanted to know."
"I'm sure of it. What were the results of your, ah, investigating?"
"Ah, Mr. Hocker, there's as much to tell as would make a man thirsty to relate it all, even in a damp set of environs such as this. So wait a bit and you'll soon enough know all, revealed to you over the best victuals and drink as the folk down here can prepare without the blessing of God's sunlight and the green things that sprout beneath it. They do the best they can, though, as you'll find out for yourself soon enough."
"'They?'" I echoed. "And who are 'they' who are providing all this?"
"Tsk, Hocker, hold your questions for a moment. Though I know a great deal, there's others who are fitter to provide you with answers, including the man who first told me all of what I know about this place. So come along now, as they're going about the raising of that submarine that sunk beneath you, and that should prove of interest to us both."