But complete silence now reigned, and the missiles from above ceased to strike the submersible. The searchlight continued to beam out of the fore end of the vessel, and following its broad ray with their eyes, they uttered one cry of mingled amazement and fear, and then stared without a word at such a spectacle as the wildest imagination could not have pictured.
The front of the Sphinx had disappeared, and the light, penetrating beyond the place where it had stood, streamed upon the face and breast of an enormous black figure, seated on a kind of throne, and staring into their faces with flaming eyes which at once fascinated and terrified them.
To their startled imaginations the eyes seemed to roll in their sockets, and flashes of fire to dart from them. Their expression was menacing and terrifying beyond belief. At the same time the aspect of the face was so majestic that they cowered before it.
The cheekbones were high, ma.s.sive, and polished until they shone in the light; the nose and chin were powerful in their contours; and the brow wore an intimidating frown. It seemed to the awed onlookers as if they had sacrilegiously burst into the sanctuary of an offended G.o.d.
But, after a minute or two of stupefaction, they thought again of the desperateness of their situation, and turned from staring at the strange idol to consider what they should do.
The fact that no water was finding its way into the submersible somewhat rea.s.sured them, but the question now arose whether it could be withdrawn from its position.
They had no doubt that the front of the Sphinx, saturated by the water after the thousands of years that it had stood there, exposed to the desiccating influences of the sun and the desert sands, had suddenly disintegrated, and fallen upon them, pinning their vessel fast under the fragments of the huge head.
De Beauxchamps tried the engines and found that they had no effect in moving the _Jules Verne_. He tried again and again by reversing to disengage the vessel, but it would not stir. Then they debated the only other means of escape.
"Although I have levium life-suits," said the Frenchman, "and although the top of the _Jules Verne_ can probably be opened, for the door seems not to have been touched, yet the instant it is removed the water will rush in, and it will be impossible to pump out the vessel."
"Are your life-suits so arranged that they will permit of moving the limbs?" demanded Cosmo.
"Certainly they are."
"And can they be weighted so as to remain at the bottom?"
"They are arranged for that," responded De Beauxchamps.
"And can the weights be detached by the inmates without permitting the entrance of water?"
"It can be done, although a very little water might enter during the operation."
"Then," said Cosmo, "let us put on the suits, open the door, take out the ballast so that, if released, the submersible will rise to the surface through its own buoyancy, and then see if we cannot loosen the vessel from outside."
It was a suggestion whose boldness made even the owner and constructor of the _Jules Verne_ stare for a moment, but evidently it was the only possible way in which the vessel might be saved; and knowing that, in case of failure, they could themselves float to the surface after removing the weights from the bottom of the suits, they unanimously decided to try Cosmo Versal"s plan.
It was terribly hard work getting the ballast out of the submersible, working as they had to do under water, which rushed in as soon as the door was opened, and in their awkward suits, which were provided with apparatus for renewing the supply of oxygen; but at last they succeeded.
Then they clambered outside, and labored desperately to release the vessel from the huge fragments of stone that pinned it down. Finally, exhausted by their efforts, and unable to make any impression, they gave up.
De Beauxchamps approached Cosmo and motioned to him that it was time to ascend to the surface and leave the _Jules Verne_ to her fate. But Cosmo signaled back that he wished first to examine more closely the strange statue that was gazing upon them in the still unextinguished beam of the searchlight with what they might now have regarded as a look of mockery.
The others, accordingly, waited while Cosmo Versal, greatly impeded by his extraordinary garment, clambered up to the front of the figure.
There he saw something which redoubled his amazement.
On the broad breast he saw a representation of a world overwhelmed with a deluge and encircling it was what he instantly concluded to be the picture of a nebula. Underneath, in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, with which Cosmo was familiar, was an inscription in letters of gold, which could only be translated thus:
I Come Again-- At the End of Time.
"Great Heavens!" he said to himself. "It is a prophecy of the Second Deluge!"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT IS A PROPHECY OF THE SECOND DELUGE."]
He continued to gaze, amazed, at the figure and the inscription, until De Beauxchamps clambered to his side and indicated to him that it was necessary that they should ascend without further delay, showing him by signs that the air-renewing apparatus would give out.
With a last lingering look at the figure, Cosmo imitated the others by detaching the weights from below his feet, and a minute later they were all shooting rapidly toward the surface of the sea, De Beauxchamps, as he afterwards declared, uttering a prayer for the repose of the _Jules Verne_.
The imaginary time which Amos Blank had fixed as the limit set by Cosmo for the return from the depths was nearly gone, and he was beginning to cast about for some other invention to quiet the rising fears of the pa.s.sengers, when a form became visible which made the eyes of Captain Arms, the first to catch sight of it, start from their sockets. He rubbed them, and looked again--but there it was!
A huge head, human in outline, with bulging, gla.s.sy eyes, popped suddenly out of the depths, followed by the upper part of a gigantic form which was no less suggestive of a monstrous man, and which immediately began to wave its arms!
Before the captain could collect his senses another shot to the surface, and then another and another, until there were seven of them floating and awkwardly gesticulating within a radius of a hundred fathoms on the starboard side of the vessel.
The whole series of apparitions did not occupy more than a quarter of a minute in making their appearance.
By the time the last had sprung into sight Captain Arms had recovered his wits, and he shouted an order to lower a boat, at the same time running down from the bridge to superintend the operation. Many of the crew and pa.s.sengers had in the meantime seen the strange objects, and they were thrown into a state of uncontrollable excitement.
"It"s them!" shouted the captain over his shoulder, in response to a hundred inquiries all put at once, and forgetting his grammar in the excitement. "They"ve come up in diving-suits."
Amos Blank comprehended the situation at once; and while the captain was getting out the boat, he explained matters to the crowd.
"The submersible must be lost," he said quietly, "but the men have escaped, so there is no great harm done. It does great credit to that Frenchman that he should have been prepared for such an emergency. Those are levium suits, and I"ve no doubt that he has got hydrogen somewhere inside to increase their buoyancy."
Within a quarter of an hour all the seven had been picked up by the boat, and it returned to the Ark. The strange forms were lifted aboard with tackle to save time; and as the first one reached the deck, it staggered about on its big limbs for a moment.
Then the metallic head opened, and the features of De Beauxchamps were revealed.
Before anybody could a.s.sist him he had freed himself from the suit, and immediately he began to aid the others. In ten minutes they all stood safe and sound before the astonished eyes of the spectators. Cosmo had suffered from the confinement, and he sank upon a seat, but De Beauxchamps seemed to be the most affected. With downcast look he said, sadly shaking his head:
"The poor _Jules Verne_! I shall never see her again."
"What has happened?" demanded Captain Arms.
"It was the Father of Horror," muttered Cosmo Versal.
"The Father of Horror--what"s that?"
"Why, the Great Sphinx," returned Cosmo, gradually recovering his breath. "Didn"t you know that that was what the Arabs always called the Sphinx?
"It was that which fell upon the submersible--split right open and dropped its great chin upon us as we were sailing round it, and pinned us fast. But the sight that we saw when the Sphinx fell apart! Tell them, De Beauxchamps."
The Frenchman took up the narrative, while, with breathless attention, pa.s.sengers and crew crowded about to listen to his tale.
"When we got to the bottom," he said, "we first inspected the Great Pyramid, going all round it with our searchlight. It was in good condition, although the tide that had come up the Nile with the invasion of the sea had washed away the sands to a great depth all about. When we had completed the circuit of the pyramid, we saw the Sphinx, which had been excavated by the water so that it stood up to its full height.
"We ran close around it, and when we were under the chin the whole thing, saturated by the water, which no doubt caused an expansion within--you know how many thousand years the gigantic idol had been sun-dried--dropped apart.
"The submersible was caught by the falling ma.s.s, and partly crushed. We labored for hours and hours to release the vessel, but there was little that we could do. It almost broke my heart to think of leaving the _Jules Verne_ there, but it had to be done.
"At last we put on the levium floating-suits, opened the cover at the top, and came to the surface. The last thing I saw was the searchlight, still burning, and illuminating the most marvelous spectacle that human eyes ever gazed upon."
"Oh, what was it? What was it?" demanded a score of voices in chorus.