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seems to inherit naval lore. We are born officers, and I reserve to myself no
special credit for an early advancement in the service.
At twenty I found myself a lieutenant in command of the aero-submarine
Coldwater, of the SS-96 class. The Coldwater was one of the first of the air and
underwater craft which have been so greatly improved since its launching, and
was possessed of innumerable weaknesses which, fortunately, have been
eliminated in more recent vessels of similar type.
Even when I took command, she was fit only for the junk pile; but the world-old
parsimony of government retained her in active service, and sent two hundred
men to sea in her, with myself, a mere boy, in command of her, to patrol thirty
from Iceland to the Azores.
Much of my service had been spent aboard the great merchantmen-of-war. These
are the utility naval vessels that have transformed the navies of old, which
burdened the peoples with taxes for their support, into the present day fleets of
self-supporting ships that find ample time for target practice and gun drill while
they bear freight and the mails from the continents to the far-scattered island of
Pan-America.
This change in service was most welcome to me, especially as it brought with it
coveted responsibilities of sole command, and I was prone to overlook the
deficiencies of the Coldwater in the natural pride I felt in my first ship.
The Coldwater was fully equipped for two months' patrolling--the ordinary length
of assignment to this service--and a month had already passed, its monotony
entirely unrelieved by sight of another craft, when the first of our misfortunes
befell.
We had been riding out a storm at an altitude of about three thousand feet. All
night we had hovered above the tossing billows of the moonlight clouds. The
detonation of the thunder and the glare of lightning through an occasional rift in
the vaporous wall proclaimed the continued fury of the tempest upon the surface
of the sea; but we, far above it all, rode in comparative ease upon the upper gale.
With the coming of dawn the clouds beneath us became a glorious sea of gold and
silver, soft and beautiful; but they could not deceive us as to the blackness and
the terrors of the storm-lashed ocean which they hid.
I was at breakfast when my chief engineer entered and saluted. His face was
grave, and I thought he was even a trifle paler than usual.
"
Well?" I asked.
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