The Lost Continent
were forced to take to the water I should continue in the same
direction.
The accident occurred directly over 30° and about 52° N. The surface
wind was blowing a tempest from the west. To attempt to ride out such a
storm upon the surface seemed suicidal, for the Coldwater was not
designed for surface navigation except under fair weather conditions.
Submerged, or in the air, she was tractable enough in any sort of
weather when under control; but without her screen generators she was
almost helpless, since she could not fly, and, if submerged, could not
rise to the surface.
All these defects have been remedied in later models; but the knowledge
did not help us any that day aboard the slowly settling Coldwater, with
an angry sea roaring beneath, a tempest raging out of the west, and 30°
only a few knots astern.
To cross thirty or one hundred seventy-five has been, as you know, the
direst calamity that could befall a naval commander. Court-martial and
degradation follow swiftly, unless as is often the case, the
unfortunate man takes his own life before this unjust and heartless
regulation can hold him up to public scorn.
There has been in the past no excuse, no circumstance, that could
palliate the offense.
“He was in command, and he took his ship across thirty!” That was
sufficient. It might not have been in any way his fault, as, in the
case of the Coldwater, it could not possibly have been justly charged
to my account that the gravitation-screen generators were worthless;
but well I knew that should chance have it that we were blown across
thirty today—as we might easily be before the terrific west wind that
we could hear howling below us, the responsibility would fall upon my
shoulders.
In a way, the regulation was a good one, for it certainly accomplished
that for which it was intended. We all fought shy of 30° on the east
and 175° on the west, and, though we had to skirt them pretty close,
nothing but an act of God ever drew one of us across. You all are
familiar with the naval tradition that a good officer could sense
proximity to either line, and for my part, I am as firmly convinced of
the truth of this as I am that the compass finds the north without
recourse to tedious processes of reasoning.
Old Admiral Sanchez was wont to maintain that he could smell thirty,
and the men of the first ship in which I sailed claimed that Coburn,
the navigating officer, knew by name every wave along thirty from 60°N.
to 60°S. However, I’d hate to vouch for this.
Well, to get back to my narrative; we kept on dropping slowly toward
the surface the while we bucked the west wind, clawing away from thirty
as fast as we could. I was on the bridge, and as we dropped from the
brilliant sunlight into the dense vapor of clouds and on down through
them to the wild, dark storm strata beneath, it seemed that my spirits
dropped with the falling ship, and the buoyancy of hope ran low in
sympathy.
The waves were running to tremendous heights, and the Coldwater was not
designed to meet such waves head on. Her elements were the blue ether,
far above the raging storm, or the greater depths of ocean, which no
storm could ruffle.
As I stood speculating upon our chances once we settled into the
frightful Maelstrom beneath us and at the same time mentally computing
the hours which must elapse before aid could reach us, the wireless
operator clambered up the ladder to the bridge, and, disheveled and
breathless, stood before me at salute. It needed but a glance at him to
assure me that something was amiss.
“What now?” I asked.
“The wireless, sir!” he cried. “My God, sir, I cannot send.”
“But the emergency outfit?” I asked.
“I have tried everything, sir. I have exhausted every resource. We
cannot send,” and he drew himself up and saluted again.
I dismissed him with a few kind words, for I knew that it was through
no fault of his that the mechanism was antiquated and worthless, in
common with the balance of the Coldwaterl’s equipment. There was no
finer operator in Pan-America than he.
The failure of the wireless did not appear as momentous to me as to
him, which is not unnatural, since it is but human to feel that when
our own little cog slips, the entire universe must necessarily be put
out of gear. I knew that if this storm were destined to blow us across
thirty, or send us to the bottom of the ocean, no help could reach us
in time to prevent it. I had ordered the message sent solely because
regulations required it, and not with any particular hope that we could
benefit by it in our present extremity.
I had little time to dwell upon the coincidence of the simultaneous
failure of the wireless and the buoyancy generators, since very shortly
after the Coldwater had dropped so low over the waters that all my
attention was necessarily centered upon the delicate business of
settling upon the waves without breaking my shipl’s back. With our
buoyancy generators in commission it would have been a simple thing to
enter the water, since then it would have been but a trifling matter of
a forty-five degree dive into the base of a huge wave. We should have
cut into the water like a hot knife through butter, and have been
totally submerged with scarce a jar—I have done it a thousand times—but
I did not dare submerge the Coldwater for fear that it would remain
submerged to the end of time—a condition far from conducive to the
longevity of commander or crew.
Most of my officers were older men than I. John Alvarez, my first
officer, is twenty years my senior. He stood at my side on the bridge
as the ship glided closer and closer to those stupendous waves. He
watched my every move, but he was by far too fine an officer and
gentleman to embarrass me by either comment or suggestion.
When I saw that we soon would touch, I ordered the ship brought around
broadside to the wind, and there we hovered a moment until a huge wave
reached up and seized us upon its crest, and then I gave the order that
suddenly reversed the screening force, and let us into the ocean. Down
into the trough we went, wallowing like the carcass of a dead whale,
and then began the fight, with rudder and propellers, to force the
Coldwater back into the teeth of the gale and drive her on and on,
farther and farther from relentless thirty.
I think that we should have succeeded, even though the ship was wracked
from stem to stern by the terrific buffetings she received, and though
she were half submerged the greater part of the time, had no further
accident befallen us.
We were making headway, though slowly, and it began to look as though
we were going to pull through. Alvarez never left my side, though I all
but ordered him below for much-needed rest. My second officer, Porfirio
Johnson, was also often on the bridge. He was a good officer, but a man
for whom I had conceived a rather unreasoning aversion almost at the
first moment of meeting him, an aversion which was not lessened by the
knowledge which I subsequently gained that he looked upon my rapid
promotion with jealousy. He was ten years my senior both in years and
service, and I rather think he could never forget the fact that he had
been an officer when I was a green apprentice.
As it became more and more apparent that the Coldwater, under my
seamanship, was weathering the tempest and giving promise of pulling
through safely, I could have sworn that I perceived a shade of
annoyance and disappointment growing upon his dark countenance. He left
the bridge finally and went below. I do not know that he is directly
responsible for what followed so shortly after; but I have always had
my suspicions, and Alvarez is even more prone to place the blame upon
him than I.
It was about six bells of the forenoon watch that Johnson returned to
the bridge after an absence of some thirty minutes. He seemed nervous
and ill at ease—a fact which made little impression on me at the time,
but which both Alvarez and I recalled subsequently.
Not three minutes after his reappearance at my side the Coldwater
suddenly commenced to lose headway. I seized the telephone at my elbow,
pressing upon the button which would call the chief engineer to the
instrument in the bowels of the ship, only to find him already at the
receiver attempting to reach me.
“Numbers one, two, and five engines have broken down, sir,” he called.
“Shall we force the remaining three?”
“We can do nothing else,” I bellowed into the transmitter.
“They won’t stand the gaff, sir,” he returned.
“Can you suggest a better plan?” I asked.
“No, sir,” he replied.
“Then give them the gaff, lieutenant,” I shouted back, and hung up the
receiver.
For twenty minutes the Coldwater bucked the great seas with her three
engines. I doubt if she advanced a foot; but it was enough to keep her
nose in the wind, and, at least, we were not drifting toward thirty.
Johnson and Alvarez were at my side when, without warning, the bow
swung swiftly around and the ship fell into the trough of the sea.
“The other three have gone,” I said, and I happened to be looking at
Johnson as I spoke. Was it the shadow of a satisfied smile that crossed
his thin lips? I do not know; but at least he did not weep.
“You always have been curious, sir, about the great unknown beyond
thirty,” he said. “You are in a good way to have your curiosity
satisfied.” And then I could not mistake the slight sneer that curved
his upper lip. There must have been a trace of disrespect in his tone
or manner which escaped me, for Alvarez turned upon him like a flash.
“When Lieutenant Turck crosses thirty,” he said, “we shall all cross
with him, and God help the officer or the man who reproaches him!”
“I shall not be a party to high treason,” snapped Johnson. “The
regulations are explicit, and if the Coldwater crosses thirty it
devolves upon you to place Lieutenant Turck under arrest and
immediately exert every endeavor to bring the ship back into
Pan-American waters.”
“I shall not know,” replied Alvarez, “that the Coldwater passes thirty;
nor shall any other man aboard know it,” and, with his words, he drew a
revolver from his pocket, and before either I or Johnson could prevent
it had put a bullet into every instrument upon the bridge, ruining them
beyond repair.
And then he saluted me, and strode from the bridge, a martyr to loyalty
and friendship, for, though no man might know that Lieutenant Jefferson
Turck had taken his ship across thirty, every man aboard would know
that the first officer had committed a crime that was punishable by
both degradation and death. Johnson turned and eyed me narrowly.
“Shall I place him under arrest?” he asked.
“You shall not,” I replied. “Nor shall anyone else.”
“You become a party to his crime!” he cried angrily.
“You may go below, Mr. Johnson,” I said, “and attend to the work of
unpacking the extra instruments and having them properly set upon the
bridge.”
He saluted, and left me, and for some time I stood, gazing out upon the
angry waters, my mind filled with unhappy reflections upon the unjust
fate that had overtaken me, and the sorrow and disgrace that I had
unwittingly brought down upon my house.
I rejoiced that I should leave neither wife nor child to bear the
burden of my shame throughout their lives.
As I thought upon my misfortune, I considered more clearly than ever
before the unrighteousness of the regulation which was to prove my
doom, and in the natural revolt against its injustice my anger rose,
and there mounted within me a feeling which I imagine must have
paralleled that spirit that once was prevalent among the ancients
called anarchy.
For the first time in my life I found my sentiments arraying themselves
against custom, tradition, and even government. The wave of rebellion