Together, the surgeon and the doctor become Walker's closest companions in his new life. (A few other Americans have penetrated to Atlantis in the past, though no one from the Earth's surface is there when Walker arrives.) The American is assigned to a barracks the doctor who serves it is appointed his guide in all things Atlantean (and is given a dispensation to speak more than 1000 words per day). Socialist literature found in Walker's pockets suggests to the Atlantean authorities that Walker might be acceptable to their regime. (He cannot say much Atlanteans are limited to a thousand words of speech per day, as measured by the "verbometers" they wear.) In fact, the man is a surgeon engaged in research he explains to Walker that they are in Atlantis, at the bottom of the sea, and gives the American a cursory explanation of the nature of Atlantean society. He loses consciousness-but is revived by a man in a strange diving suit Walker at first mistakes him for a kind of fish/man. In a fit of depression he decides on suicide by drowning: he hurls himself off "the long pier.called the Suicides' Promenade" at Coney Island. Yet his personal poverty, and the slow progress of his cause, leave him despondent. John Walker is a young American socialist, active and dedicated. "With a smirk and a bow I greeted the old witch," original oil painting illustration for The Scarlet Empire by Hermann C.
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