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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.

The Lost Continent