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hope, a more entertaining, style; though, being only a naval officer and without
claim to the slightest literary ability, I shall most certainly fall far short of the
possibilities which are inherent in my subject. That I have passed through the
most wondrous adventures that have befallen a civilized man during the past two
centuries encourages me in the belief that, however ill the telling, the facts
themselves will command your interest to the final page.
Beyond thirty! Romance, adventure, strange peoples, fearsome beasts--all the
excitement and scurry of the lives of the twentieth century ancients that have
been denied us in these dull days of peace and prosaic prosperity--all, all lay
beyond thirty, the invisible barrier between the stupid, commercial present and
the carefree, barbarous past.
What boy has not sighed for the good old days of wars, revolutions, and riots;
how I used to pore over the chronicles of those old days, those dear old days,
when workmen went armed to their labors; when they fell upon one another with
gun and bomb and dagger, and the streets ran red with blood! Ah, but those
were the times when life was worth the living; when a man who went out by night
knew not at which dark corner a "footpad" might leap upon and slay him; when
wild beasts roamed the forest and the jungles, and there were savage men, and
countries yet unexplored.
Now, in all the Western Hemisphere dwells no man who may not find a school
house within walking distance of his home, or at least within flying distance.
The wildest beast that roams our waste places lairs in the frozen north or the
frozen south within a government reserve, where the curious may view him and
feed him bread crusts from the hand with perfect impunity.
But beyond thirty! And I have gone there, and come back; and now you may go
there, for no longer is it high treason, punishable by disgrace or death, to cross
3
0d or 175d.
My name is Jefferson Turck. I am a lieutenant in the navy--in the great Pan-
American navy, the only navy which now exists in all the world.
I was born in Arizona, in the United States of North America, in the year of our
Lord 2116. Therefore, I am twenty-one years old.
In early boyhood I tired of the teeming cities and overcrowded rural districts of
Arizona. Every generation of Turcks for over two centuries has been represented
in the navy. The navy called to me, as did the free, wide, unpeopled spaces of the
mighty oceans. And so I joined the navy, coming up from the ranks, as we all
must, learning our craft as we advance. My promotion was rapid, for my family
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