The Kraken Wakes

THE KRAKEN WAKES JOHN WYNDHAM

The nearest iceberg looked firmly grounded. Waves, with the whole fetch of the Atlantic behind them, exploded upon it, just as they would upon solid rock. Further out there were other large bergs, also stranded by the falling tide, and looking like sudden white mountains. Here and there among them smaller ones were still afloat, with the wind and the current driving them slowly up the Channel. That morning there were more, I fancy, than we had ever before seen at one time. I paused to look at them. Blinding white crags in a blue sea.

'I think,' I said, 'that I shall write an account of all this.'

'You mean a long one, about the whole thing? A book?' Phyllis asked.

'Well, I don't suppose it will ever be a printed book, with stiff covers and a cloth binding — but still, a book,' I agreed.

'I suppose a book is still a book, even if no one but the writer and his wife ever reads it,' she said.

'There's a chance that someone else might. I've a feeling it ought to be done. After all, we know as much about the whole thing as anyone — in a general way. The specialists know more about their particular bits, of course, but, between us, we ought to be able to put together quite a picture.'

'Without references or records?' she questioned.

'If anyone ever does read it, then he'll be able to have the pleasure of digging out the documentation — what's left of it. My idea is simply to give an account of how the whole thing has appeared to me — to us.'

'Stick to "me" — you can't do it from two points of view,' she advised.

She huddled her coat more closely round her. Her breath clouded in the cold air. We regarded the icebergs. There seemed to be even more than one had thought. Some of those further out were only visible because of the waves breaking on them as they wallowed along.

'It'd help to pass the winter,' Phyllis conceded, 'and then, perhaps, when the Spring comes…' She let the thought tail off, unfinished. At the end of some reflection she said:

'Where will you begin?'

'I've not got as far as thinking of that yet,' I confessed.

'I think you ought to start with that night on board the Guinevere when we saw —'

'But, darling, no one has ever proved that they had anything to do with it.'

'An account, you said. If you are going to need proof of everything, you might as well not start at all.'

'What about that first dive?' I suggested. 'The thing does connect up pretty closely from there.'

She shook her head.

'People — if anyone does read it — can disregard what you put in if they don't like it — but it doesn't help anybody if you go leaving out things that might be important just because you're not absolutely sure.'

I frowned.

'I've never been really convinced that those fireballs were — Well, after all, the word coincidence exists because the things do.'

'Then say so. But the Guinevere is the proper place to begin.'

'All right,' I conceded. 'Chapter One — An Interesting Phenomenon.'

'Unfortunately, in several ways, we are not living in the nineteenth century. Now, if I were you I should divide the whole thing into three phases. It falls naturally that way. Phase One would be —'

'Darling, whose book is this to be?'

'Ostensibly yours, my sweet.'

'I see — rather like my life since I met you?'

'Yes, darling. Now, Phase One — Gosh! Look at that!'

A large berg, thawed below and undercut by the water, began to turn over with a monstrous deliberation. A great, flat ice-face smacked down, sending spray high into the air. The berg kept on rolling, slowed, hung for a moment, and then started to roll back. We watched it loll lazily this way and that with decreasing swings until it settled down, presenting an entirely new aspect.

Phyllis returned to the matter in hand.

'Phase One,' she repeated firmly, and then paused. 'No. Before that you want a sort of key question, with a page all to itself.'

'Yes,' I agreed, 'I'd thought of —' But she shook her head, thinking. Presently:

'Got it!' she said. 'It's by Emily Pettifell, whom I don't suppose you ever heard of.'

'Quite right,' I told her. 'I'd thought of —'

'It was in The Pink Nursery Book,' she said. She pulled a gloved hand out of her pocket, and recited:

I shook my head. 'Too long. And, if I may say so, don't you think The Pink Nursery Book is a trifle out of key?'

'But the last two lines, Mike. Just right.' She repeated them:

— But, Mother, please tell me, what can those things be

That crawl up so stealthily out of the sea?

'I'm sorry, darling, but it's still "no," ' I said.

'You won't get anything more apposite. What were you thinking of?'

'Well, I had in mind a thing of Tennyson's.'

'Tennyson!' she exclaimed, painedly.

'Listen!' I said, and took my turn at recitation. 'Not one of his major poetical works,' I admitted, 'but even Tennyson was young once.'

'My last couplet was more appropriate.'

'In words and at the moment, but not in spirit. Besides, mine may even come true in the end,' I told her.

We ding-donged a bit about it, but, after all, it is supposed to be my book. Phyllis can write her own if she likes. So here goes:

Below the thunders of the upper deep;

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee

About his shadowy sides: above him swell

Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;

And far away into the sickly light,

From many a wondrous grot and secret cell

Unnumber'd and enormous polypi

Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.

There hath he lain for ages and will lie

Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by men and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Alfred Tennyson

Phase One

I'm a reliable witness, you're a reliable witness, practically all God's children are reliable witnesses in their own estimation — which makes it funny how such different ideas of the same affair get about. Almost the only people I know who agree word for word on what they saw on the night of 15 July are Phyllis and I. And, as Phyllis happens to be my wife, people said, in their kindly way behind our backs, that I 'over-persuaded' her: a thought and a euphemism that could only proceed from someone who did not know Phyllis.

The time was 11.15 p.m.; the place, latitude 35, some 24 degrees west of Greenwich; the ship, the Guinevere; the occasion, our honeymoon. About these facts there is no dispute. The cruise had taken us to Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Verde Islands, and had then turned north to show us the Azores on our way home. We, Phyllis and I, were leaning on the rail, taking a breather. From the saloon came the sound of the dance continuing, and the crooner yearning for somebody. The sea stretched in front of us like a silken plain in the moonlight. The ship sailed it as smoothly as if she were on a river. We gazed out silently at the infinity of sea and sky. Behind us the crooner went on baying.