“He Waits Beneath the Sea” (Strange Stories, October 1939)

Bloch, Robert [Tarleton Fiske]. “He Waits Beneath the Sea.” Strange Stories, October 1939, pp. 65-74. 
archive.org/details/StrangeStoriesV02N02193910/page/n63/mode/2up

On a submarine far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, David Ames is doing the important work of making out with his girlfriend, Jean, the daughter of the science expedition leader. They feel the craft running aground strangely and then plummeting downward, which should be impossible because they are already on the ocean floor. After a harrowing descent, they break out of their small cabin into the outside world: a cavern full of air and strange light. They encounter what appears to be animated corpses from across history: Roman Empire soldiers, Vikings, and an old friend of David’s who was killed smuggling alcohol off the coast of Florida to name three examples. These hostile beings are somewhat easy for David, now armed with a sword, to defeat, but not before one promises vengeance by “the one who waits” (69). As they get a better look at where they are, they see hundreds of thousands of corpses of seafarers littering the cavern. In the cavern’s center is a black coffin; it contains the promised “one who waits.” That being tells them that life on the surface is primitive and new. Under the sea, where life began, evolution has progressed at an accelerated pace: “…after a time, we below evolved so highly that our bodies disappeared. 

Only Intelligence remained; an Intelligence so great ye could not begin to understand it. And carrying out the full cycle of Evolution, that Intelligence finally began to die. I am the last survivor” (71). This being has been drawing ships down into the depths hoping one day to capture a fully healthy human being; it has not happened until submarines became advanced and humans could survive the depths. The Intelligence hopes to enter the body of a human being, rise to the surface with his army, and seize power. Ames is overcome by an army of the dead although he struggles. Soon, the dead stop fighting become inert. He wonders at the change until he realizes that Jean is gone. He follows a group of the dead—imitating their gait and manners—to the chamber of the one who waits. Inside the chamber is a fleet of submarines all pointed to the surface. Jean was at the side of the black coffin. The Intelligence first occupied the broken body of Jean’s uncle. Then it attempted to occupy Jean’s body. That is when David attacked. He cut a swath through the animated corpses and beheaded the body of Jean’s uncle. Jean activated the nearest submarine, and the two of them rocketed to the surface where they finished their kissing under the Pacific stars.

I was having lunch with my good friend, Wikipedia, who told me that the idea of “Davy Jones’s Locker” originated in the eighteenth century. Here is a snippet from The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) by Tobias Smollett: “This same Davy Jones, according to sailors, is the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep, and is often seen in various shapes, perching among the rigging on the eve of hurricanes: ship-wrecks, and other disasters to which sea-faring life is exposed, warning the devoted wretch of death and woe” (Smollett 112). I can imagine Bloch thinking about this phrase, mixing in a whiff of Cthulhu—especially in the title—and coming up with a story arc that will become familiar as he works out the kinks in stories such as “Queen of the Metal Men” (1940) which eventually became “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” I also love the idea of a submarine story for Bloch. It reminded me a little bit—but only a little bit—of Lovecraft’s “The Temple,” a story I really like. Where HPL is brooding and obscure, Bloch is swashbuckling and heroic. It features a bunch of swordfights, and so toss that genre onto the pile here, as well, along with romance, submarines, Cthulhu, seafaring mythology, and other stuff, but I love this story as a setting for a tabletop RPG module with its frequent combat and many available low-tech weapon and tactical options. Jean is even an appealing femme fatale. She is the one saves the day a few times during the story, including revving up the escape sub at the end.