Hour after hour the destroyer kept up her furious pace almost due north
in the Pacific. We never came in sight of land, and it was impossible for
me to guess whence we were bound.
Throughout the first day Dr. Gresham remained in his stateroom—silent,
troubled, buried in a mass of arithmetical calculations.
In another part of the ship the six tailors I had brought on board
labored diligently upon a number of Chinese costumes, the designs for
which the doctor had sketched for them.
And on deck a detail of men was busy unpacking and assembling one of the
two hydroplanes.
By the middle of the second day Dr. Gresham laid aside his calculations
and began to display the keenest interest in the details of the voyage.
About midnight he had the ship stopped, although neither land nor any
other craft was in sight; whereupon he went to the hold and studied the
hydro-seismographs. To my surprise I saw that, although we were adrift
upon the restless ocean, the instrument was recording tremors similar
to earthquakes on land. These occurred precisely eleven minutes and six
seconds apart.
Seeing my astonishment, the doctor explained:
“It is possible to record earth shocks even at sea. The ocean bed imparts
the jar to the water, through which the tremor continues like the wave
caused by throwing a stone into a pond.”
But the thing which seemed to interest my friend most was that these
shocks now appeared to be originating at some point to the northeast of
us, instead of to the northwest, as we had noted them in Washington.
Soon he ordered the vessel started again, this time on a northeasterly
course, and the next morning we were close to land.
Dr. Gresham, who at last had begun to throw off his taciturn mood, told
me this was the coast of the almost unsettled province of Cassiar, in
British Columbia. Later, as we began to pass behind some rugged islands,
he said we were entering Fitz Hugh Sound, a part of the “inland passage”
to Alaska. We were now approximately 300 miles northwest of the city of
Vancouver.
“Somewhere, not far to the north of here,” added the doctor, “is ‘The
Country of the Great Han,’ where Chinese navigators, directed by
Huei-Sen, a Buddhist priest, landed and founded colonies in the year 499
A. D. You will find it all recorded in ‘The Book of Changes,’ which was
written in the reign of Tai-ming, in the dynasty of Yung: how, between
the years 499 and 556, Chinese adventurers made many trips across the
Pacific to these colonies, bringing to the wild inhabitants the laws of
Buddha, his sacred books and images; building stone temples; and causing
at last the rudeness of the natives’ customs to disappear.”
With this my friend left me, upon some summons from the ship’s commander,
and I could learn no more.
The region into which we were now penetrating was one of the wildest
and loneliest on the North American continent. The whole coastline was
fringed by a chain of islands—the tops of a submerged mountain range.
Between these islands and the continent extended a maze of deep, narrow
channels, some of which connected in a continuous inland waterway. The
mainland was a wilderness of lofty peaks, penetrated at intervals by
tortuous fiords, which, according to the charts, sometimes extended
erratically inland for a hundred miles or more. Back from the coast a few
miles, we could see the elevated gorges of the main range filled with
glaciers, and occasionally one of these gigantic rivers of ice pushed
out to the Sound, where its face broke away in an endless flotilla of
icebergs.
The only dwellers in this region were the few inhabitants of the tiny
Indian fishing villages, scattered many miles apart; and even of these we
saw not a sign throughout the day.
Toward nightfall the doctor had the _Albatross_ drop anchor in a quiet
lagoon, and the hydroplane that had been assembled on deck was lowered to
the water.
It now lacked two nights of the period of full moon, and the nearly
round satellite hung well overhead as darkness fell, furnishing, in that
clear atmosphere, a beautiful illumination in which every detail of the
surrounding mountains stood forth.
As soon as the last trace of daylight had vanished, Dr. Gresham, equipped
with a pair of powerful binoculars, appeared on deck, accompanied by an
aviator. He said nothing about where he was going; and, knowing his moods
so intimately, I realized it was useless to seek information until he
volunteered it. But he handed me a large sealed envelope, remarking:
“I am going for a trip that may take all night. In case I should not
return by sun-up you will know something has happened to me, and you
are to open this envelope and have Commander Mitchell act upon the
instructions it contains.”
With this, he gave me a firm hand-clasp that plainly was meant for a
possible farewell, and followed the aviator into the plane. In a few
moments they were off, their new type of noiseless motor making scarcely
a sound, and soon were climbing towards the summits of the snow-crowned
peaks to the eastward. Almost before we realized it, they were lost from
sight.
It was my intention to keep watch through the night for the return of my
friend; but after several hours I fell asleep and knew no more until dawn
was reddening the mountaintops. Then the throbbing of the destroyer’s
engines awakened me, and I hurried on deck to find Dr. Gresham himself
giving orders for the vessel’s movements.
The scientist never once referred to the events of the night as he
partook of a light breakfast and went to bed. However, I could tell by
his manner that he had not met with success.
Slowly the ship continued northward most of that day, through the awesome
fastnesses of Fitz Hugh Sound, until we reached the mouth of a grim fiord
set down on the charts as Dean Channel. Here we cast anchor.
Late in the afternoon Dr. Gresham put in his appearance, viewed the
mainland through his glasses, and then went into the ship’s hold to study
his earthquake recorder. What he observed apparently pleased him.
This night also was moonlit and crystal-clear; and, as before, when
daylight had departed, the doctor reminded me of the sealed orders I held
against his failure to return at sunrise, bade me farewell, and started
off in the airship, flying straight toward the range of peaks that walled
the eastern world.
On this occasion a series of remarkable happenings removed all difficulty
of my keeping awake.
About 10 o’clock, when I chanced to be visiting in the commander’s cabin,
an officer came and informed us of some strange lights that had been
observed above the mountains at a distance inland. We went on deck and,
sure enough, beheld a peculiar and inexplicable phenomenon.
To the northeast the heavens were illuminated at intervals by flashes
of white light extending, fan-shaped, far overhead. The display was as
brilliant and beautiful as it was mysterious. For a good while we watched
it—until I was suddenly struck with the regularity of the intervals
between the flashes. Timing the lights with my watch, I found they
occurred _precisely eleven minutes and six seconds apart_!
With a new idea in mind, I made a note of the exact instant when each
flash appeared; then I went down into the hold of the ship and looked at
Dr. Gresham’s hydro-seismograph. As I suspected, the aerial flashes had
occurred simultaneously with the earthquakes.
When I returned to the deck the phenomenon in the sky had ceased, and it
did not appear again all night.
But shortly after midnight another portentous event occurred to claim
undivided attention.
The powerful wireless of the _Albatross_, which could hear messages
coming and going throughout the United States and Canada, as well as
over a great part of the Pacific Ocean, began to pick up accounts of
terrible happenings all over the world. The fissures in the ground, which
had appeared shortly before we left San Francisco, had suddenly widened
and lengthened into a nearly-unbroken ring about the portion of the
globe from which the inhabitants had been warned to flee. Within this
danger-circle the ground had begun to vibrate heavily and continuously—as
the lid of a tea kettle “dances” when the pressure of steam beneath it is
seeking a vent.
The flight of the public from the doomed area had grown into an appalling
hegira—until a fresh disaster, a few hours ago, had suddenly cut it
short: the Rocky Mountains had begun to fall down throughout most of
their extent, obliterating all the railroads and other highways that
penetrated their chain. Now the way to safety beyond the mountains was
hopelessly blocked.
And with this catastrophe hell had broken loose among the people of
America!
It was near dawn before these stories ceased. The officers and myself
were still discussing them when day broke and we beheld Dr. Gresham’s
hydroplane circling high overhead, seeking a landing. In a few minutes
the doctor was with us.
The instant I set eyes on him I knew he had met with some degree of
success. But he said nothing until we were alone and I had poured out the
tale of the night’s happenings.
“So you saw the flashes?” remarked the doctor.
“We were greatly puzzled by them,” I admitted. “And you?”
“I was directly above them and saw them made,” he announced.
“Saw them _made_?” I repeated.
“Yes,” he assured me; “indeed, I have had a most interesting trip. I
would have taken you with me, only it would have increased the danger,
without serving any purpose. However, I am going on another jaunt
tonight, in which you might care to join me.”