The Lost Continent | Page 7

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,