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We thought he was crazy; but he wasn't, for that afternoon we sighted a great
berg south of us, and we'd been running north, we thought, for days. I can tell
you we were a discouraged lot; but we got a faint thrill of hope early the next
morning when the lookout bawled down the open hatch: "Land! Land northwest
by west!"
I think we were all sick for the sight of land. I know that I was; but my interest
was quickly dissipated by the sudden illness of three of the Germans. Almost
simultaneously they commenced vomiting. They couldn't suggest any explanation
for it. I asked them what they had eaten, and found they had eaten nothing other
than the food cooked for all of us. "Have you drunk anything?" I asked, for I
knew that there was liquor aboard, and medicines in the same locker.
"
Only water," moaned one of them. "We all drank water together this morning.
We opened a new tank. Maybe it was the water."
I started an investigation which revealed a terrifying condition--some one,
probably Benson, had poisoned all the running water on the ship. It would have
been worse, though, had land not been in sight. The sight of land filled us with
renewed hope.
Our course had been altered, and we were rapidly approaching what appeared to
be a precipitous headland. Cliffs, seemingly rising perpendicularly out of the sea,
faded away into the mist upon either hand as we approached. The land before us
might have been a continent, so mighty appeared the shoreline; yet we knew that
we must be thousands of miles from the nearest western land-mass--New
Zealand or Australia.
We took our bearings with our crude and inaccurate instruments; we searched
the chart; we cudgeled our brains; and at last it was Bradley who suggested a
solution. He was in the tower and watching the compass, to which he called my
attention. The needle was pointing straight toward the land. Bradley swung the
helm hard to starboard. I could feel the U-33 respond, and yet the arrow still
clung straight and sure toward the distant cliffs.
"
"
"
"
What do you make of it?" I asked him.
Did you ever hear of Caproni?" he asked.
An early Italian navigator?" I returned.
Yes; he followed Cook about 1721. He is scarcely mentioned even by
contemporaneous historians--probably because he got into political difficulties on
his return to Italy. It was the fashion to scoff at his claims, but I recall reading
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