28.
“Steer ten degrees portside.” Captain Nemo called out. “Assemble the men. It’s time.”
The crew of the Nautilus then stood up from their work or rest position before they tidied up their appearance. It was as if they were to be their mother or at worse God for his final judgment.
“Attention!” Captain Nemo himself stood up and then raised his hand in salute. The crews followed suit but nt the others who were awakened from their slumber of over two hours. It was Mycroft who gave them more reason to wake for he was seated at the main glass opening of the vessel.
“Blimey! What is that?”
The sight soon appeared to the Nautilus then, with parts of slowly revealed. It was a huge metal vessel that lay on the sea bed. It must have measured very long for it took the Nautilus a long time to sail past it. It held the design of a ship with the bow and stern complete with the keel but its deck was a long cover that reached its length with the tall narrow tower in the bow. It was the vessel name that gave it away.
“Nautilus?” Mycroft uttered out. “It can’t be. That ship is over five hundred feet in length.”
“Five hundred and twenty five to be exact with a height of over a hundred and twenty. I can’t make out the width….” Sherlock corrected the other but was baffled by what he could not see then.
“Twenty five feet, Mr Holmes. That was the Nautilus with the original Captain Nemo at its helm. It held a crew of a hundred fifty and they all went down together.” Captain Nemo explained. “My uncle Prince Dakkar designed and built it. She sailed for over twenty years through storms and fair weather to rest here.”
It was seen then the huge hole that sunk the vessel at the side near the propellers.
“The impact took out the main engines and flooded the compartment. A call for made to abandon ship was made but none of the crew took it. They wanted to go down with the Captain.”
“Who hit her? The U-Boats?” Mycroft the patriotic asked.
“No, it was the Tall Man tribe weapon. You will soon meet them. Lovely chaps.” Captain Nemo smiled. “I had them for enemies for some time now. Bloody nuisance and never have them for tea or for a game of bridge. They are poor company and bloody cheats at the game too.”
“If that is Nautilus, then which one is this? Nautilus II?” Mycroft have to be dense at the worst of times.
“Yes, this is the new Nautilus. It could not rival the original but then it worked for us.” Captain Nemo replied. “Captain Nemo or Prince Dakkar was a genius and he had the disposal of the treasures he recovered and with the Raj’ assistance, he build that. I am the humble successor with a limited treasure to work with and parts of his designs to emulate on. I think my Nautilus may not be as formidable like that, but it had sailed the seven seas with me.”
That raised a cheer from the crew.
“You could approach the King for …” Mycroft was shut up by the Germans.
“Dumkoft! The Kaiser had launched U-Boats while your King was still rowing down the river Thames.” That was German pride and echoed by Van Helsing who snapped in his words.
“Even Dracula loathed your tea. He prefers the Black Tea ours.”
It started off a Channel riff for raff but Captain Nemo was past listening to them. He got the crews back to their work stations and the Nautilus was headed for a softer landing.
It can’t be said Lady Greystoke and Lord Greystoke then for being shackled to the wall on their feet and hands was most uncomfortable. Their weapons were removed then. Lady Greystoke looked at their new surrounding then. Her last recall was reaching to examine the lump on her lover’s head. She saw the other was breathing and it was a relief. She then looked across the place that they were shackled to then. It was a walled unit with no window but one door opening. Besides the two of them, there were another three more. She recognized the Irish hunter but not the other two ladies shackled to the far right. The younger stirred and then look up.
“Black Cat, wake up!” The younger one called out. The other lady shackled to the wall woke up and her first reaction was to pull at the shackles.
“Mistress, are you fine?” The one named Black Cat asked. “I will get free soon.”
“I hope its sooner.” Lady Greystoke saw the new addition to their company. It was a metallic unit that rolled in on the four wheels. It was a rounded unit with a rounded top but the bottom part sat on the four wheels. It was about a foot in diameter and it stopped before the shackled group. The oblong top slid back and revealed a number on antennas and small discs. The discs started rotating and on its body another panel slide open. It was rectangle in shape and narrow like a match box. The slot on the body then emitted a light which was on the group. It was a rectangle light and covered all four of the captives.
“What’s happening?” Lady Greystoke struggled on her shackles trying to avoid the light but it was enveloping all of them. It then stopped. Before Lady Greystoke could mumbled a curse out, another light came on and next thing that happened was total blackness.
“We could have found a better time to wade onto the beach.” Mycroft grumbled when his Saville designed shoes were soaked to the top. It was dark and the insets were out. He marched his way to the sandy beach like a Guardsman marching at the Palace. The others took to the task without a mumble for their eyes were on the treelines. They were expecting a lion or maybe a pack will charge at them.
“I never fancied a watery death but if it was then I figured my bathtub will suffice. I meant a sleeping death and not drowning.” Sherlock was whispering to Watson.
“Stop your mutterings. We are all getting our feet wet.” Watson plodded on. “And we are not dead …not yet anyway.”
The group assembled at the sandy beach and then Captain Nemo waved to his departing crew on the long boat to go back to the Nautilus. They have made three trips to bring the group there, and it was time to return.
“Are they not joining us?” Herr Gunter asked while he clicked the rifle to arm.
“No, they are sailors. They don’t belong to die here on the land.” Captain Nemo looked at his departing crew. He wondered if he will see them again. It may be nearer than he expected. The beam of lights came from nowhere and three men rowing the boat went down.
“Bosun!’ Captain Nemo displayed his emotions then.
At least they died in the water.
The shots were fired in random directions but there was further beam of lights then. Most of the rifles were emptied of the loads and then the frantic reloading before Mycroft called out.
“Hold your fire!” Mycroft shout did not reflect his action with the rifle levelled at the treeline. “We need to find cover.”
“Funny you will say that when only you are still standing in the open.” Watson voiced out. “Get into cover.”
The beam of light hit Mycroft in the chest.
29.
Watson lowered Myrcroft to the soft bedding of palm leaves. The beam of light did not hit the man directly in the chest but crossed his left lungs and bloody well did not kill him except a long burn mark.
“He will live?” Sherlock asked. “Since we lost Sigrina, I ….”
“Oh, shut up! I am …investigating him.” Watson stood up and walked to the fireplace by the beach. It was a silly thing to light a fire when you know that the enemy is out there but he couldn’t care less. He has a patient which needed treatment. At the fireplace, the others were all seated there except for three Germans who were on guard at the perimeter.
“How is he?” Herr Gunter asked.
“As like most patients, unappreciative unless they are sedated. Then they sleep like a child.” Watson replied. “Herr Gunter, I thought you will know being a medical doctor like me.”
“Me medical? No, you are mistaken. I am more of an archaeologist. I favoured checking dried bones than fleshy ones.”
“You are not a medical …doctor. I am sorry for my oversight.” Watson smiled. “I …”
“Elementary, my dear Watson. He is not one for he held a small pick in his pocket with the small glass to magnify his view.” Sherlock felt good then with his deductive skills taking the stage then.
“Observation from the great detective, Sherlock Holmes. I am impressed.” Herr Gunter remarked. “Herr Dupin … Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin would have your rival if he was not a fictional detective.”
“My salutation to Herr Edgar Allan Poe for such creating such a unique character but we do have similarities in our skills. With due consideration, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. He had some analytical genius, no doubt, but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appears to imagine. Those were my exact words to Doctor Watson when he compared me to Dupin.”
“There will many more of my peers in the coming ages for deductive detective works will be the platform to secure a conviction of the right person.” Sherlock continued on. “It’s not only wrong justice that were past on the wrongly accused but inconclusive evidence which distressed their innocence when on trial.”
“Gentlemen, please get some rest. We got an island to journey over.” It was a proper call for the group was tired then.
It was not for the awake like Lord Greystoke who had once submerged into his other ego as the savage Trazan. The savage fought against the shackles for the restraint was a humiliation to the ones that lived wild. He pulled at the shackles until his skin there were bruised and bloodied but nothing was to quell his anger when the metal rounded contraption rolled in. It activated by remote the release on the shackles on Lady Greystoke. The lady weakened from her ordeal fell to the flooring. She was then raised by some form of levitation power and the floated to the exit. Tarzan screamed out in his savage growl and was silenced by the beam of light fired from the metallic unit. Tarzan slumped unconscious on his shackles and for some unknown logic the shackles on the savage was released allowing him to slump down to the flooring. He was however left there while the lady was floated out of the unit.
“He is freed.” The mistress voiced out. “Wake him.”
The aide named as the Black Cat ignored the mistress and worked on her shackles. It was not any key and lock shackles but a seamless mechanism then. She had not seen such a lock and then focussed on the unconscious man. She had not seen the man but his antics showed him to be a man of strength. He could be considered a great warrior like her father. She looked down when she thought of her own father who was a skilled pugilist that suffered a shameful death by the betrayal of his own apprentice. He had lament that his skills would not be learned by one to carry on his family name but a daughter who will lose her own identity when she wed but the sole daughter of the master remained a single determined lady who earned the namesake Black Cat. She have learned all that was to be taught by her father and then developed her own but each of her techniques was deadly and her opponents hardly survived her attacks. She sought the apprentice that betrayed her father and would have killed him if he was without the protection of the Emperor of the Heavenly Throne. She escaped with fatal wounds and was saved by the other Emperor known as the Warlike Manchu. He was the leader of the Si Fan and was an opponent of the ‘Western Imperialists’. The Emperor was called by his fearsome name Fu Manchu. He had helped her to kill the once before apprentice and secured her loyalty to him. It was how she came to the side of the Mistress Fa Lo Suee, the daughter of Fu Manchu.
“My daughter is a rebel with me. She was born of my concubine and raised in a nunnery but the spirit of my bloodline drove the girl to seek me out. She came to my palace; a runaway and near death. It was not compassion but I saw in her the shadow of myself. I hold no son but the daughter of mine was to be like one. She lived and prospered with my coaching, and yet she will stab me in the back if I am not attentive. The lady is like a cobra with no affliction for servitude. Just as she is a serpent in my den, you will be the mongoose to stop her if she attacks me but when she is docile, protect her like your own.”
The Black Cat lady looked to her care for over five years then. The Mistress was a shadow of her father but one that will not trail but engulf the body if left in the dark. The Black Cat have wondered why the Emperor tolerate her and even loaned her his organization knowing that she may corrupted the followers. Some have taken her route but they have not survived long for the Emperor had long reaches with his own assassins. The recent task began as a rumour of a warlord that the treasure of King Solomon was known and it led the Mistress on the trial for over a year with a trail of dead bodies and wasted resources but like the father, she was relentless. She collaborated with the one to topple the Raj but failed in getting the treasure. She waited her next move like the cobra; ever patiently and then struck when ready but her strikes have been wrong so far. The man lying prone on the flooring may be her answer to getting closer to the treasure.
“I can’t wake him. I can’t get out of these shackles.” Black Cat replied. It drew anger from the Mistress who cursed back.
“What good are you to me if you cannot do what I ask?” Mistress Fa Lo Suee hissed back while she struggled with the shackles. “I am the …”
“Daughter of Fu Manchu and yet you never respected your father.” Black Cat cut in. “Mistress, be your father’s…”
“I am not his daughter. I am just of one of his whore’s children. He cared not for any that he had fathered except his own…”
“Son? He has none. He has you for one. You father holds no other except you. He may be barren or his …lovers were. He once told me that he had affection for one as his daughter. Her name is Karamaneh, the child he took under his care from the Eqyptian trader.”
“Yes, and Karamaneh betrayed him for the one named Petrie. She …”
“Like you perhaps. Unappreciative and …”
“I am my father’s blood. We don’t stand to serve but be served. Stop talking like my mother and figure how we can leave.” That ended the discussion between the two while one held tears to her eyes wondering if she did right.
“Right now, gentleman the task begin for us. Wakey up for we have a treasure to secure.” Captain Nemo voiced out when the sun appeared on the horizon. Mycroft stretched his legs and then pushed himself up with the rifle as the pillar to hold onto. He saw Sherlock seated at the other side curled up in the foetus position with Doctor Watson in attendance. He could only guess what could be the cause. He walked over and tapped on the Doctor’s shoulder.
“He needs his dosage.” Watson looked at Mycroft. “Do you have any?”
Mycroft reached for the ammo belt where the bullets were stored in the pouches there. He opened one of it and took out the syringe and two vial.
“I kept it there for emergencies. I found it in the Nautilus medical case.” Watson looked at it. It was no cocaine but morphine. It will help the other given the available options. Soon after he jabbed the sleuth, his name was called up.
“Doctor Watson, your patients are ready. Shall we proceed?” It was the Captain who was in need of a new fix to his treasury. The others all looked at Watson.
“We need to find the Vault.” Watson replied.
“That I know.” Nina stepped up. “It’s yonder there.”
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