Mountain Home Republican. [volume] (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1915-1946, 1921-05-14

suits, then fastened on q sort OF KNAPP
sack which furnished us not only with
air to breathe, but with the light to
see our way. We carried air-guns
which fired class bullets heavily charg-
60 with electricity, which had only TO
touch the most powerful animal to XIII
him A connecting compartment flled
with water let us into the sea. Ano
mus equipped, wading on the bottom
OF the clear ocean, we killed our game
with ease and without danger.
That hunt was but the first OF the
wonders of the cruise. Onward we
rushed, sometimes on the surface,
sometimes under the sea. There was
our fight with the immense devii-nsh
which once in huge school enmeshed
the Nautilus. There was the visit TO
a wonderful pearl fishery, where Cap
tain Memo showed us a moliusc With
in whose Jaws was pearl weighing
perhaps 500 pounds. Some day ne
would return and pluck that treasure,
but not yet-every year was adding 70
Its value. We visited the skeletons Oh
long-sunken ships, the corpses Oh the
drowned crew still clinging to the hulis
of some. We hunted In the Papuah
islands where the Nautilus was at
tackled by the native savages. An eiec-
trio current turned them back shocked
and bowling ere they could ciimo
aboard.
When one of the crew died Captain
Memo had him buried In coral GLADE
In the South Pacific, where was a
cross of red coral that looked ike
petrified blood. It was wonderful,
solemn sight to see the pall-bearers
with the dead body on their shoulders
and all treading so reverentially the
way from the ship to the coral Gene
terry, where at the foot of the cross
the body was inferred and covered up.
All knelt in prayer. Captain MEMO
was the last to leave.
"Your dead sleep quietly out OF the
reach of sharks" said when we were
back on the Nautilus.
"Of sharks and men," he replied.
We voyaged under colossal icebergs
to the South Pole and all but persisted
there, escaping from an Icy tomb only
as our last breath of storage air was
exhausted. Wonderful was our passage
from the Red sea into the Mediter-
ranean by means of a subterranean
tunnel under the isthmus. (This was
before the digging of the Suez canai.)
There we witnessed the transfer of q
million dollars worth of gold ing0ts
from the Nautilus to the vessel OF
Greek diver.
Whence came this store Of gold?
Later we learned.
In Vigo bay, ON the Spanish coast,
the Nautilus came to rest on bottom.
Here in 1902 a feet of Spanish gall
Icons were sunk, and here from this
sunken treasure more than century
and a half later this ruler of the
underseas came and helped himself
whenever it pleased him. give nun.
bred millions were there" said Cap
tain Memo, ''but not now. Do you
see now how with these and the other
treasures of my domain / could pay
the national debt Of France and not
feel it?"
We had now been six months aboard
the Nautilus. For me, the scientist, 1t
was a voyage of ceaseless interest !;
but not so for Conseil and Ned Land.
At their request / pleaded with Cap
tain Memo for our liberty.
"You came to my ship without In
vitatlon. You will now remain here"
was his grim answer.
We had left the southern hemi-
sphere and were in the waters off
France and the British islands when
we were pursued by an armed war
ship. Flying no colors, she attacked
at once. Her cannon shot rebounded
from our iron hull.
Captain Memo, pointing to her, said !:
81 am the oppressed, and there is my
oppressor. Through him I have lost
country, wife, children, father and
mother. Why should / withhold my
vengeance?"
He called out his orders. The Maui
titus sank below the sea. We felt her
rushing forward, felt the shock of her
steel ram piercing the hull of the en-
envy. Through the glass panels we
saw her doomed crew crowding thu
ratlines, clinging to the rails, strug
Cling In the sea. The Nautilus passed
on.
saw captain Memo go to his room
and kneel before the portrait of a
woman and two little children. "How
long, o Lord, how longl" he cried out.
We steamed north, to that part of
the Norwegian coast where lies that
dreaded maelstrom which draws into
itself all floating things. The Nautilus
was IT an accident?-was drawn In.
to the whirlpool. Around and around
she whirled. Even her steel hull felt
the strain; we could hear bolts being
pulled out from sher Orders. The
long-boat was torn from its place on
deck and hurled like a stone into the
whirlpool. ! lost consciousness.
When I came to myself, I was in a
Loffoden fisherman's hut, and ConseiI
and Ned Land were chatting my hands.
So ended our voyage of oO0Oo