The sunken world

The maiden voyage of the X-111 was ill-fated from the first. Perhaps the new inventions had not yet been perfected, or perhaps, in the haste of wartime, adequate tests had not b...

How any of us chanced to survive is more than I can say. In the turbulence and vertigo of that last blind roaring moment, I had vaguely felt that we had reached the end of all t...

No sooner was the darkness complete than it seemed to be populated with all manner of weird and terrible things. The disappearance of the light seemed to be the signal for the a...

Rawson and I had been gone not half an hour when the aspect of the country began suddenly to change. It was as though we had passed some indistinguishable boundary, for the boul...

The next few hours showed us a continuous amazing panorama. The marble temple proved to be but one of a series connected by long and graceful colonnades; and in the central stru...

Far from echoing the agitation I felt, Rawson seemed actually pleased at the turn of events. It piqued his imagination to think that we should be so far beneath the sea; and he...

For a moment we were like rats newly trapped. All trace of reason left us in our sudden furious terror; we began to scurry blindly to and fro, to and fro in the darkness, panic-...

It may have been no more than thirty seconds before the silence was broken, though it felt like many, many minutes. But at length one of the newcomers, turning to his companions...

“Lord have mercy on me, if it ain’t Harkness! And Rawson, too!” cried Stranahan, leaping to his feet, and seizing our hands in a hearty grip. “By all things holy, I thought I’d...

Great as was my joy upon observing that the entrancing mysterious lady was Stranahan’s tutor, it was to be some time before her daily proximity had any effect upon my life. And...

The chief effect of the discovery of the books was to make me doubly anxious to speak the native tongue. Not one of the score of volumes cast any light on the problems that bewi...

The arrival of Stranahan, of course, had its effect. Not only did he interrupt my conversation with Aelios at a crucial point, but he made it impossible for the discussion to ta...

To our disappointment, we received no immediate explanation of the arrival of Captain Gavison and his men. A score of the natives, who stood frowning in the background, appeared...

During the next few hours, Captain Gavison and the new-found members of his crew were all provided with the native garb and lodged in sumptuous quarters in various parts of the...

While my intimacy with Captain Gavison was ripening, I had of course not forgotten one whose friendship meant more to me than that of any man. In the exhilarating moments of tha...

Three or four days after the pageant, I was surprised to receive a visitor in the shape of a serious-looking gray old man whom I did not remember ever having seen before. In his...

Promptly at noon the following day I presented myself before the Committee on Selective Assignments. The offices, which I found without difficulty, were located on the lower flo...

Two days later I set out on what was to prove the most extraordinary excursion of my life. Arriving early in the morning at the appointed meeting place--an open, flower-bordered...

For five or six hours we proceeded through the fruit-bearing jungles, which seemed limitless in extent and yet constantly displayed new and unexpected features. But the journey...

Early the following morning we were again under way. Leaving Thalos through a little arched gateway under the western wall, we trudged for several hours through flat green count...

That evening we were lodged in the city of Arvon, a moderately large town which differed strikingly from anything we had yet seen. Its scattered houses were huddled amid vegetat...

During the thirty days of our journey, I was the witness of marvels so numerous that, if I were to dwell upon them all, I might fill hundreds of pages. Yet while there is much t...

As an accredited citizen of Atlantis, I was assigned to permanent lodgings immediately after returning to Archeon. The housing representative of the Atlantean government (the on...

Amid all the excitement of my return to Archeon, my establishment in new quarters and my meeting with Xanocles, I had not forgotten Aelios’ advice to visit the library at the fi...

It is from my first visit to the library that I date my real initiation into the affairs of Atlantis. From that time forth I was no longer a stranger in an unknown world; I beca...

Even though my companions felt constantly ill at ease in Atlantis, yet as the weeks went by they were becoming more proficient in the use of the native tongue and were taking th...

Although at times during my first months in Atlantis I may have felt out of place and wished that the waters would open above me and bear me back to my own land, yet my longings...

The eight days that followed the discovery of the crack were among the most harrying I had ever spent. Indeed, they were among the most harrying that any resident of Atlantis ha...

Although all Atlantis resumed its normal aspect soon after the wall had been repaired, things were never again to be quite as before. It was as though there were some unseen fis...

An election in Atlantis was seldom accompanied by intense excitement. There was no registration, for all citizens were permanently enrolled with the population bureau; on electi...

I had been in Atlantis two years before I had completed my “History of the Upper World.” Considering the magnitude of the task, it surprises me now to remember that I finished i...

Not many months after the publication of the “History of the Upper World” there occurred a vastly more important event. At least, it was vastly more important to me, and constit...

When I look back now upon my life in Atlantis, my sojourn there seems to divide itself into two periods, of which the longer and by far the more tranquil, dates from my union wi...

In the interval, all Atlantis was in a state verging upon madness. The commotion created by the original discovery of the crack was insignificant beside the terror that now domi...

The facts of my return from Atlantis have been reported so widely that it would be futile for me to dwell upon them. It is generally known how, having crossed the ocean at the s...