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one of his works--his only one, I believe--in which he described a new continent
in the south seas, a continent made up of `some strange metal' which attracted
the compass; a rockbound, inhospitable coast, without beach or harbor, which
extended for hundreds of miles. He could make no landing; nor in the several
days he cruised about it did he see sign of life. He called it Caprona and sailed
away. I believe, sir, that we are looking upon the coast of Caprona, uncharted and
forgotten for two hundred years."
"If you are right, it might account for much of the deviation of the compass during
the past two days," I suggested. "Caprona has been luring us upon her deadly
rocks. Well, we'll accept her challenge. We'll land upon Caprona. Along that long
front there must be a vulnerable spot. We will find it, Bradley, for we must find
it. We must find water on Caprona, or we must die."
And so we approached the coast upon which no living eyes had ever rested.
Straight from the ocean's depths rose towering cliffs, shot with brown and blues
and greens--withered moss and lichen and the verdigris of copper, and
everywhere the rusty ocher of iron pyrites. The cliff-tops, though ragged, were of
such uniform height as to suggest the boundaries of a great plateau, and now
and again we caught glimpses of verdure topping the rocky escarpment, as
though bush or jungle-land had pushed outward from a lush vegetation farther
inland to signal to an unseeing world that Caprona lived and joyed in life beyond
her austere and repellent coast.
But metaphor, however poetic, never slaked a dry throat. To enjoy Caprona's
romantic suggestions we must have water, and so we came in close, always
sounding, and skirted the shore. As close in as we dared cruise, we found
fathomless depths, and always the same undented coastline of bald cliffs. As
darkness threatened, we drew away and lay well off the coast all night. We had
not as yet really commenced to suffer for lack of water; but I knew that it would
not be long before we did, and so at the first streak of dawn I moved in again and
once more took up the hopeless survey of the forbidding coast.
Toward noon we discovered a beach, the first we had seen. It was a narrow strip
of sand at the base of a part of the cliff that seemed lower than any we had before
scanned. At its foot, half buried in the sand, lay great boulders, mute evidence
that in a bygone age some mighty natural force had crumpled Caprona's barrier
at this point. It was Bradley who first called our attention to a strange object
lying among the boulders above the surf.
"
Looks like a man," he said, and passed his glasses to me.
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