For it was 'round Cape Stiff we went--no
Panama Canal in those days--and I served a bitter
apprenticeship on ice-coated yards, clutching numbly at
battering sails frozen stiff as iron. It was Peru we were
bound for,--Peru where the submarine city lay beneath
uncounted fathoms waiting for us. The captain and I were the
only ones Acuma, the half-breed, had taken into his
confidence; all the others sailed on a blind errand, trusting
to the skipper, who was a shrewd man and severe. And the
brigantine wallowed around the Cape and toiled on and on up
the coast, and every day Acuma grew more restless; every day
he cast about the water with eyes that seemed to pierce to
the very bottom of the Pacific.
One day of blue sky and little breeze, when we were pushing
the brigantine with all sails set, Acuma flung himself at a
bound to the quarterdeck, and a moment later the skipper
shouted quick orders that the crew could not understand for
the life of them. For to heave the ship to, just when we all
had been whistling for enough breeze to give her something
more than steerage way, seemed nothing short of insane. Acuma
climbed to the maintop and looked at the coast of Peru with a
telescope, and the captain took bearings with his
instruments.
It was Acuma and I who went over the side in diving suits,
for no others save the captain knew what we sought, as I have
said.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43