"The Last Man from Atlantis" by Alexander Belyaev, summary Automatic translate

This collection of short stories and novels was created between 1925 and 1935. The works are united by the theme of the ocean’s mysteries, the exploration of the deep sea, and the search for sunken ancient civilizations.

The novel "Amphibian Man" was successfully adapted into a film. The 1961 film of the same name became a box office hit. The story "Island of Lost Ships" served as the basis for a musical television film released in 1987.

This text is published as part of the "Marine Library" book series. This is the sixty-eighth book in the series. It brings together four independent works of fiction under one cover.

Island of Lost Ships

New York detective Jim Simpkins escorts arrested engineer Reginald Gatling. A transatlantic steamship suffers a hull breach during a fierce night storm. Panicked, sailors and passengers rush to the lifeboats. The engineer rescues the billionaire’s drowning daughter, Viviana Kingman. Gatling, Simpkins, and the girl remain on the drifting wreckage. The ocean current slowly carries them into the Sargasso Sea. Thick brown seaweed binds the wreckage tightly. The heroes discover a gigantic island formed by the hulls of frigates, galleons, and modern steamships, trapped there for centuries. Professor Luders assembles these vessels into a historical museum.

A unique colony of human survivors is subject to the harsh rules of local Governor Fergus Slayton. The tyrant forces Viviana to choose a husband in a special ceremony. She rejects all suitors: the old man Bocco, the Irishman O’Gara, and the dictator himself. Slayton decides to take her by force. Gatling challenges the governor to a fistfight, brutally beats his opponent, and throws him overboard. The population rallies to the courageous engineer.

Gatling finds an old German submarine. He secretly restores the submarine’s diesel engines and batteries. A group of conspirators organizes an escape. Slayton survives the fall, rallies his supporters, throws a grenade, and attacks the fugitives. In a shootout, the tyrant is killed by a bullet from an Irish sailor. The submarine dives, eluding pursuit by enraged islanders. Oxygen supplies are rapidly depleted, and breathing becomes unbearable. Simpkins risks his life: he exits through the torpedo tube with a sharp knife, cuts through dense seaweed, and frees the propellers. The submarine surfaces. The heroes are picked up by an oncoming steamer. Newspapers bring the news: the true culprit, Lorrobie, has been found, and Gatling has been fully exonerated.

The Last Man from Atlantis

New York millionaire Solly finances Professor Larison’s expedition. Scientists drill into the Atlantic Ocean floor at a depth of 3,000 meters. Under a layer of silt, stone blocks are discovered — the ruins of an ancient civilization.

The story shifts to the distant past. Mighty Atlantis enslaved neighboring peoples. The cruel King Guan-Atagueragan demands enormous taxes. The high priesthood is dissatisfied with their ruler and is plotting a coup d’état. The priests exploit the ignorance of the masses, using astronomical knowledge to stage false miracles. Slaves toil in copper mines, suffocating from toxic gases. The priest’s young son, Aksa-Guam, falls in love with the slave Ata, develops sympathy for the oppressed, and organizes an armed uprising.

The brilliant slave sculptor Adishirna kidnaps the king’s daughter, Sel. The lovers hide in the mountains. The rebellious slaves seize weapons arsenals and attack the Sacred Hill. The battle is interrupted by a tectonic catastrophe. The old priest Atzro-Shanu notices inaccuracies in the instruments and realizes: the earth’s crust has shifted. A volcano erupts, the earth trembles, and giant cracks tear the soil apart. The king and high-ranking officials flee on pre-prepared ships. The slaves perish in streams of hot lava and gigantic tsunamis. Ata shields Aksa-Guam from a flying spear. The great continent splits and sinks beneath the sea. Aksa-Guam escapes on a drifting vessel. Sea currents wash the ship onto the harsh northern coast of Eurasia. The last Atlantean passes on the skills of fire-making and agriculture to the wild Celtic tribes.

Amphibian Man

Surgeon Salvator lives behind high walls in Buenos Aires. His gardens are home to strange stitched-together animals and two-headed snakes. Many years ago, the doctor saved a dying Native American child by transplanting shark gills into the boy. Ichthyander gained the ability to breathe underwater. The young man grows up in isolation, swimming with Liding the dolphin and boldly hunting giant octopuses. Local pearl divers are terrified of the mysterious "sea devil." Pedro Zurita, owner of the schooner "Medusa," is eager to capture Ichthyander for forced extraction of shells from the ocean floor. The Native American Cristo spies on the surgeon.

Ichthyander accidentally saves a drowning girl, Guttiere. Zurita hypocritically takes credit for this. The amphibian man comes ashore, finds the girl, and gives her rare pearls. Guttiere takes a liking to the young man. The vagabond Balthazar mistakenly believes Ichthyander is his missing son. Zurita forcibly takes Guttiere to a remote ranch and forces him to marry. He tracks down Ichthyander, knocks him unconscious with a heavy shovel, and chains him. The amphibian man works himself to death, collecting pearls for his greedy master.

Salvator frees his adopted son. The court accuses the doctor of blasphemy. Salvator is imprisoned. Ichthyander is kept in a cramped prison tank filled with filthy, putrid water. The young man’s health is irreparably damaged: his lungs weaken, his gills dry out painfully in the open air. The prison warden organizes an escape. Guttiere’s friend, the worker Olsen, takes the amphibious man to the sea. Ichthyander swims forever to the Pacific Ocean to join a French scientist. Guttiere abandons Zurita and goes to Olsen. Old Balthazar goes mad on the ocean shore.

The Miraculous Eye

Inventor Blasco Jurges discovers a method for generating energy from split atoms. He engraves chemical formulas on metal plates. During a voyage on the luxury liner Leviathan, the scientist is shipwrecked. The ship sinks. Jurges manages to throw a sealed glass bottle containing an encrypted message overboard and securely tie the plates to the liner’s anchor chain.

A Soviet fishing trawler catches a bottle. Radio operator Motya Ginzburg creates an underwater television — a device for visually scanning the ocean depths using a cathode-ray tube, a picture tube, and powerful spotlights. Journalist Azores finds Khurges’s comrade, Kar, and deciphers a letter. Three Soviet ships set sail for the Azores Islands. The sailors methodically search for the sunken liner. A sick schoolboy, Misha Borin, with a broken leg, watches the search on his home radio in Moscow, maintaining constant radio contact with the ocean.

Adventurer Scott pursues the same goal: he’s searching for barrels of gold that sank along with the liner and his former companion, Williams. The American charters the steamship Urania and disrupts the Soviet flotilla. Televisions on Soviet ships broadcast images of the seabed. Scientists discover a sunken ancient city, enormous stone statues, galleys, and ancient ruins. Underwater footage is instantly transmitted to the USSR. An airship drops a passenger from the sky onto the deck of a trawler.

Diver Protchev descends to the wreck of the Leviathan. A Japanese diver, secretly hired by Scott, attacks Protchev with a sharp knife. The Epronovian defeats the enemy and, with a well-aimed blow, kills a shark that attacked from behind. Scott blows up the Leviathan with dynamite, hoping to retrieve the coveted gold. A Soviet steel manipulator, controlled from the deck, lifts a barrel of coins. The enraged American throws the Khurges plates found by the sailors overboard, mistaking them for ordinary trash. Protchev dives again and rescues the priceless scientific records. The secret of atomic energy has been safely delivered to the USSR for the development of the socialist economy.