Chapter 1

It must have been a little after three o’clock in the afternoon that it

happened—the afternoon of June 3rd, 1916. It seems incredible that all that I

have passed through—all those weird and terrifying experiences—should have been

encompassed within so short a span as three brief months. Rather might I have

experienced a cosmic cycle, with all its changes and evolutions for that which

I have seen with my own eyes in this brief interval of time—things that no

other mortal eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past, a world dead, a

world so long dead that even in the lowest Cambrian stratum no trace of it

remains. Fused with the melting inner crust, it has passed forever beyond the

ken of man other than in that lost pocket of the earth whither fate has borne

me and where my doom is sealed. I am here and here must remain.

After reading this far, my interest, which already had been stimulated by the

finding of the manuscript, was approaching the boiling-point. I had come to

Greenland for the summer, on the advice of my physician, and was slowly being

bored to extinction, as I had thoughtlessly neglected to bring sufficient

reading-matter. Being an indifferent fisherman, my enthusiasm for this form of

sport soon waned; yet in the absence of other forms of recreation I was now

risking my life in an entirely inadequate boat off Cape Farewell at the

southernmost extremity of Greenland.

Greenland! As a descriptive appellation, it is a sorry joke—but my story has

nothing to do with Greenland, nothing to do with me; so I shall get through

with the one and the other as rapidly as possible.

The inadequate boat finally arrived at a precarious landing, the natives,

waist-deep in the surf, assisting. I was carried ashore, and while the evening

meal was being prepared, I wandered to and fro along the rocky, shattered

shore. Bits of surf-harried beach clove the worn granite, or whatever the rocks

of Cape Farewell may be composed of, and as I followed the ebbing tide down one

of these soft stretches, I saw the thing. Were one to bump into a Bengal tiger

in the ravine behind the Bimini Baths, one could be no more surprised than was

I to see a perfectly good quart thermos bottle turning and twisting in the surf

of Cape Farewell at the southern extremity of Greenland. I rescued it, but I

was soaked above the knees doing it; and then I sat down in the sand and opened

it, and in the long twilight read the manuscript, neatly written and tightly

folded, which was its contents.

You have read the opening paragraph, and if you are an imaginative idiot like

myself, you will want to read the rest of it; so I shall give it to you here,

omitting quotation marks—which are difficult of remembrance. In two minutes you

will forget me.

My home is in Santa Monica. I am, or was, junior member of my father’s firm. We

are ship-builders. Of recent years we have specialized on submarines, which we

have built for Germany, England, France and the United States. I know a sub as

a mother knows her baby’s face, and have commanded a score of them on their

trial runs. Yet my inclinations were all toward aviation. I graduated under

Curtiss, and after a long siege with my father obtained his permission to try

for the Lafayette Escadrille. As a stepping-stone I obtained an appointment in

the American ambulance service and was on my way to France when three shrill

whistles altered, in as many seconds, my entire scheme of life.

I was sitting on deck with some of the fellows who were going into the American

ambulance service with me, my Airedale, Crown Prince Nobbler, asleep at my

feet, when the first blast of the whistle shattered the peace and security of

the ship. Ever since entering the U-boat zone we had been on the lookout for

periscopes, and children that we were, bemoaning the unkind fate that was to

see us safely into France on the morrow without a glimpse of the dread

marauders. We were young; we craved thrills, and God knows we got them that

day; yet by comparison with that through which I have since passed they were as

tame as a Punch-and-Judy show.

I shall never forget the ashy faces of the passengers as they stampeded for

their life-belts, though there was no panic. Nobs rose with a low growl. I

rose, also, and over the ship’s side, I saw not two hundred yards distant the

periscope of a submarine, while racing toward the liner the wake of a torpedo

was distinctly visible. We were aboard an American ship—which, of course, was

not armed. We were entirely defenseless; yet without warning, we were being

torpedoed.

I stood rigid, spellbound, watching the white wake of the torpedo. It struck us

on the starboard side almost amidships. The vessel rocked as though the sea

beneath it had been uptorn by a mighty volcano. We were thrown to the decks,

bruised and stunned, and then above the ship, carrying with it fragments of

steel and wood and dismembered human bodies, rose a column of water hundreds of

feet into the air.

The silence which followed the detonation of the exploding torpedo was almost

equally horrifying. It lasted for perhaps two seconds, to be followed by the

screams and moans of the wounded, the cursing of the men and the hoarse

commands of the ship’s officers. They were splendid—they and their crew. Never

before had I been so proud of my nationality as I was that moment. In all the

chaos which followed the torpedoing of the liner no officer or member of the

crew lost his head or showed in the slightest any degree of panic or fear.

While we were attempting to lower boats, the submarine emerged and trained guns

on us. The officer in command ordered us to lower our flag, but this the

captain of the liner refused to do. The ship was listing frightfully to

starboard, rendering the port boats useless, while half the starboard boats had

been demolished by the explosion. Even while the passengers were crowding the

starboard rail and scrambling into the few boats left to us, the submarine

commenced shelling the ship. I saw one shell burst in a group of women and

children, and then I turned my head and covered my eyes.

When I looked again to horror was added chagrin, for with the emerging of the

U-boat I had recognized her as a product of our own shipyard. I knew her to a

rivet. I had superintended her construction. I had sat in that very

conning-tower and directed the efforts of the sweating crew below when first

her prow clove the sunny summer waters of the Pacific; and now this creature of

my brain and hand had turned _Frankenstein_, bent upon pursuing me to my

death.

A second shell exploded upon the deck. One of the lifeboats, frightfully

overcrowded, swung at a dangerous angle from its davits. A fragment of the

shell shattered the bow tackle, and I saw the women and children and the men

vomited into the sea beneath, while the boat dangled stern up for a moment from

its single davit, and at last with increasing momentum dived into the midst of

the struggling victims screaming upon the face of the waters.

Now I saw men spring to the rail and leap into the ocean. The deck was tilting

to an impossible angle. Nobs braced himself with all four feet to keep from

slipping into the scuppers and looked up into my face with a questioning whine.

I stooped and stroked his head.

“Come on, boy!” I cried, and running to the side of the ship, dived

headforemost over the rail. When I came up, the first thing I saw was Nobs

swimming about in a bewildered sort of way a few yards from me. At sight of me

his ears went flat, and his lips parted in a characteristic grin.

The submarine was withdrawing toward the north, but all the time it was

shelling the open boats, three of them, loaded to the gunwales with survivors.

Fortunately the small boats presented a rather poor target, which, combined

with the bad marksmanship of the Germans preserved their occupants from harm;

and after a few minutes a blotch of smoke appeared upon the eastern horizon and

the U-boat submerged and disappeared.

All the time the lifeboats had been pulling away from the danger of the sinking

liner, and now, though I yelled at the top of my lungs, they either did not

hear my appeals for help or else did not dare return to succor me. Nobs and I

had gained some little distance from the ship when it rolled completely over

and sank. We were caught in the suction only enough to be drawn backward a few

yards, neither of us being carried beneath the surface. I glanced hurriedly

about for something to which to cling. My eyes were directed toward the point

at which the liner had disappeared when there came from the depths of the ocean

the muffled reverberation of an explosion, and almost simultaneously a geyser

of water in which were shattered lifeboats, human bodies, steam, coal, oil, and

the flotsam of a liner’s deck leaped high above the surface of the sea—a watery

column momentarily marking the grave of another ship in this greatest cemetery

of the seas.

When the turbulent waters had somewhat subsided and the sea had ceased to spew

up wreckage, I ventured to swim back in search of something substantial enough

to support my weight and that of Nobs as well. I had gotten well over the area

of the wreck when not a half-dozen yards ahead of me a lifeboat shot bow

foremost out of the ocean almost its entire length to flop down upon its keel

with a mighty splash. It must have been carried far below, held to its mother

ship by a single rope which finally parted to the enormous strain put upon it.

In no other way can I account for its having leaped so far out of the water—a

beneficent circumstance to which I doubtless owe my life, and that of another

far dearer to me than my own. I say beneficent circumstance even in the face of

the fact that a fate far more hideous confronts us than that which we escaped

that day; for because of that circumstance I have met her whom otherwise I

never should have known; I have met and loved her. At least I have had that

great happiness in life; nor can Caspak, with all her horrors, expunge that

which has been.

So for the thousandth time I thank the strange fate which sent that lifeboat

hurtling upward from the green pit of destruction to which it had been

dragged—sent it far up above the surface, emptying its water as it rose above

the waves, and dropping it upon the surface of the sea, buoyant and safe.

It did not take me long to clamber over its side and drag Nobs in to

comparative safety, and then I glanced around upon the scene of death and

desolation which surrounded us. The sea was littered with wreckage among which

floated the pitiful forms of women and children, buoyed up by their useless

lifebelts. Some were torn and mangled; others lay rolling quietly to the motion

of the sea, their countenances composed and peaceful; others were set in

hideous lines of agony or horror. Close to the boat’s side floated the figure

of a girl. Her face was turned upward, held above the surface by her life-belt,

and was framed in a floating mass of dark and waving hair. She was very

beautiful. I had never looked upon such perfect features, such a divine molding

which was at the same time human—intensely human. It was a face filled with

character and strength and femininity—the face of one who was created to love

and to be loved. The cheeks were flushed to the hue of life and health and

vitality, and yet she lay there upon the bosom of the sea, dead. I felt

something rise in my throat as I looked down upon that radiant vision, and I

swore that I should live to avenge her murder.

And then I let my eyes drop once more to the face upon the water, and what I

saw nearly tumbled me backward into the sea, for the eyes in the dead face had

opened; the lips had parted; and one hand was raised toward me in a mute appeal

for succor. She lived! She was not dead! I leaned over the boat’s side and drew

her quickly in to the comparative safety which God had given me. I removed her

life-belt and my soggy coat and made a pillow for her head. I chafed her hands

and arms and feet. I worked over her for an hour, and at last I was rewarded by

a deep sigh, and again those great eyes opened and looked into mine.

At that I was all embarrassment. I have never been a ladies’ man; at

Leland-Stanford I was the butt of the class because of my hopeless imbecility

in the presence of a pretty girl; but the men liked me, nevertheless. I was

rubbing one of her hands when she opened her eyes, and I dropped it as though

it were a red-hot rivet. Those eyes took me in slowly from head to foot; then

they wandered slowly around the horizon marked by the rising and falling

gunwales of the lifeboat. They looked at Nobs and softened, and then came back

to me filled with questioning.

“I—I—” I stammered, moving away and stumbling over the next thwart. The vision

smiled wanly.

“Aye-aye, sir!” she replied faintly, and again her lips drooped, and her long

lashes swept the firm, fair texture of her skin.

“I hope that you are feeling better,” I finally managed to say.

“Do you know,” she said after a moment of silence, “I have been awake for a

long time! But I did not dare open my eyes. I thought I must be dead, and I was

afraid to look, for fear that I should see nothing but blackness about me. I am

afraid to die! Tell me what happened after the ship went down. I remember all

that happened before—oh, but I wish that I might forget it!” A sob broke her

voice. “The beasts!” she went on after a moment. “And to think that I was to

have married one of them—a lieutenant in the German navy.”

Presently she resumed as though she had not ceased speaking. “I went down and

down and down. I thought I should never cease to sink. I felt no particular

distress until I suddenly started upward at ever-increasing velocity; then my

lungs seemed about to burst, and I must have lost consciousness, for I remember

nothing more until I opened my eyes after listening to a torrent of invective

against Germany and Germans. Tell me, please, all that happened after the ship

sank.”

I told her, then, as well as I could, all that I had seen—the submarine

shelling the open boats and all the rest of it. She thought it marvelous that

we should have been spared in so providential a manner, and I had a pretty

speech upon my tongue’s end, but lacked the nerve to deliver it. Nobs had come

over and nosed his muzzle into her lap, and she stroked his ugly face, and at

last she leaned over and put her cheek against his forehead. I have always

admired Nobs; but this was the first time that it had ever occurred to me that

I might wish to be Nobs. I wondered how he would take it, for he is as unused

to women as I. But he took to it as a duck takes to water. What I lack of being

a ladies’ man, Nobs certainly makes up for as a ladies’ dog. The old scalawag

just closed his eyes and put on one of the softest

“sugar-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth” expressions you ever saw and stood there

taking it and asking for more. It made me jealous.

“You seem fond of dogs,” I said.

“I am fond of this dog,” she replied.

Whether she meant anything personal in that reply I did not know; but I took it

as personal and it made me feel mighty good.

As we drifted about upon that vast expanse of loneliness it is not strange that

we should quickly become well acquainted. Constantly we scanned the horizon for

signs of smoke, venturing guesses as to our chances of rescue; but darkness

settled, and the black night enveloped us without ever the sight of a speck

upon the waters.

We were thirsty, hungry, uncomfortable, and cold. Our wet garments had dried

but little and I knew that the girl must be in grave danger from the exposure

to a night of cold and wet upon the water in an open boat, without sufficient

clothing and no food. I had managed to bail all the water out of the boat with

cupped hands, ending by mopping the balance up with my handkerchief—a slow and

back-breaking procedure; thus I had made a comparatively dry place for the girl

to lie down low in the bottom of the boat, where the sides would protect her

from the night wind, and when at last she did so, almost overcome as she was by

weakness and fatigue, I threw my wet coat over her further to thwart the chill.

But it was of no avail; as I sat watching her, the moonlight marking out the

graceful curves of her slender young body, I saw her shiver.

“Isn’t there something I can do?” I asked. “You can’t lie there chilled through

all night. Can’t you suggest something?”

She shook her head. “We must grin and bear it,” she replied after a moment.

Nobbler came and lay down on the thwart beside me, his back against my leg, and

I sat staring in dumb misery at the girl, knowing in my heart of hearts that

she might die before morning came, for what with the shock and exposure, she

had already gone through enough to kill almost any woman. And as I gazed down

at her, so small and delicate and helpless, there was born slowly within my

breast a new emotion. It had never been there before; now it will never cease

to be there. It made me almost frantic in my desire to find some way to keep

warm the cooling lifeblood in her veins. I was cold myself, though I had almost

forgotten it until Nobbler moved and I felt a new sensation of cold along my

leg against which he had lain, and suddenly realized that in that one spot I

had been warm. Like a great light came the understanding of a means to warm the

girl. Immediately I knelt beside her to put my scheme into practice when

suddenly I was overwhelmed with embarrassment. Would she permit it, even if I

could muster the courage to suggest it? Then I saw her frame convulse,

shudderingly, her muscles reacting to her rapidly lowering temperature, and

casting prudery to the winds, I threw myself down beside her and took her in my

arms, pressing her body close to mine.

She drew away suddenly, voicing a little cry of fright, and tried to push me

from her.

“Forgive me,” I managed to stammer. “It is the only way. You will die of

exposure if you are not warmed, and Nobs and I are the only means we can

command for furnishing warmth.” And I held her tightly while I called Nobs and

bade him lie down at her back. The girl didn’t struggle any more when she

learned my purpose; but she gave two or three little gasps, and then began to

cry softly, burying her face on my arm, and thus she fell asleep.