TALES OF THE TASMAN

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3155, 6 August 1917, Page 6

TALES OF THE TASMAN

THE GEOLOGICAL MATE'

AND HIS LOST CONTINENT

(By Will lawson.) (All Rights Reserved.) The mate came to the door of the captain's cabin. • "Come in, Mr. Blaze," said the skipper. To tho two passengers who were his guests, he added, "Excuse me, gentlemen." Dotting his cap, the mate entered and rumbled something about "Three Knobs bearing and Bald Top." The captain rose from his chair and reached for his cap. "Be back in a moment," ho ejaculated, and followed the mate out to the dark decks. The passengers smoked on in silence and heard the ripple and rush of the waters of Queen Charlotte Sound aloug the steamer's sides. One of them' peered out of a curtained window and saw only darkness. "Steering by the hill-tops, I suppose," ho remarked. "How thc-y see them beats me." His companion grunted agreement. They heard ,the steam steering gear's "Hi! hi! hi! hurry!" hurry," as it hauled the drowsy helm hard over. Then, having had its' joke, the steam let tho tiller go giggling back again. For a time there was silence, save for the hustle and. thump of the compound engines, more excited play of the steering' gear followed at intervals, till, with a roll and a stagger the packet tumbled out of tho smooth waters of the Sound into the Strait. The captain returned presently and threw his cap on the table. "Plenty of room now and a clear night," he said. The flash of The Brothers twinkled on the tlark outer side of the window panes. The steamer assumed a dignified roll that was mostly swagger. "Safe as houses," the captain said, in answer to a question, "steering by the hills in there. Yes, seamen know more about tho land than most people give -them credit for. You've heard of the pilots who could find their position in. a fog by sme'lling the dipsy lead. That's true enough, too, though I never studied the sea-bottom to that extent myself. But I had a mate once who was koen oil it. Volcanic submarine action, submerged chasms that the cables fret across, sulphur springs that corrode the cables, copper reefs where oysters flourish—all these things were an open book to him. He went a bit too far, though, when he sprang a lost continent on me. "Oh! it was this way. We were laying a straight white track across the blue one sunny afternoon, Sydney to Auckland run. I was on deck and the mate was watching the horizon with a dreamy look in his ere. Presently he said: "If s queer to think, that we re steaming over a lost continent, where a vast civilisation once flourished, cities, mountains, people."' . I looked at him hard. "Is that a joke?" I asked. "No," he said, "it was a sure enough continent called Lemuria, lay' between mid-Tasman and the Equator, bigger than Atlantis, it was." "How high would some of those mountains be?" I asked. Talking of land in deep water alwavs makes me jumpy. "Higher than Mount Cook," he answered. ■■ „ _ .. „ , , "Look hero, Mr. Gaze," I said,. what about heaving the lead?" That made him laugh, and he explained that in the Tasman the peaks were all well under-water, lhe Chief came up from his engine-room about that lime, and he was smiling. "How is she?" I asked. "Running as sweet as a baby, he said. She was single-screw, and could cut out her sixteen, carried just a little starboard .helm; that made the steersman's, job easy enough, just a touch every now and then, and that is better than ono of your lubbsr-lme helms that keeps the ship yawing to port or starboard, and the wheel sawing back and forth like the wheel of a motor-oar. "Ought-to pick up the lungs about eight o'clock, oughtn't we?" the Chief went on. ', ~~, "Just abonl," -I said, "if we dont hit Mr. Gaze's lost continent."

"Whafs that?" "Nothing at all," the mate said'shortly. "Just something I've read of. >t "I've never bumped on one -of them, the Chief laughed, "but I've heard a lost anchor chain grinding outside when-we were clawing over the Wanganui bar. Well/you know how the talk runs oft at a tangent. And we thought no more of lost continents. There was a late moon that set about nine o'clock that night. We had not raided the Three Kings. After the moon went I began to think, and darn me it that lost continent didn't keep pushing its mountain peaks into my thoughts. •Sort of premonition or something, you d call it. Anyway I went on deck. "Seen anvthing?" I asked the mate.

"No, sir. . "Haul her out a couple of points, I said. It was in the days before the Tllinganiite came to grief, and before the Kings' position 'had been re-charted. « o buzzed along for a time. Still inside me the thought of that darned continent kent pushing in. ■ . ■ "Better get the lead ready, I said. Tlie mate looked at me, but he sent for the second' and told/him to get the lend- out. "We're well off the Kings," the mate said to me, when the second had gone. "I know. But its that lost continent of yours that worries me." . He said no more, and I watched ard thought. "Half-speed," I suddenly ordered. As the telegraph tinkled far below';and •tho answering "whirr" came, even tho steersman look sideways- at me. They all reckoned the "old man" had got&'em. "Heave nwayj" I sang out to the Second mate.

"No bottom, sir," tH'e leadsman's singsong- cam«. Sho was slipping quietly through tlie water. Again the lead plunked into tlie dark tide. In the pause following the mate coughed. I remember, because that coush annoyed me. "Two hundred fathoms," the leadsman sang, in tones that suggested surprise. "Stop her!" I The. mate muttered. "The lost continent." I stood and stared and listened. "One hundred fathoms and shoaling fast." The man's voice expressed astonishment. I heard the mate gasp and the steersman- spat on the, deck and hastily put hifl foot over it. Then the looik-out took a hand; and, jit God! he made us jump. "Tlie Big King, sir!" he yelled. "Right ahead." Before ho had.pot the words cut she was kicking up the water like a paddle steamer, and the man at the wheel was hanging on to his, spokes as if- he expected me to tell lam to make her do a double somersault. The mate was still at the telegraph, and he was ialking to himself. Yon see, to him, an island wasn't an island, it was the top of a mountain that was glued to a lost continent.