“We will start at once,” he told me, “and Commander Mitchell will go with us.”
Taking from me the sealed letter of instructions he had left in my care before starting on his airplane trips the previous nights, he handed it to the commander, saying: “Give this to the officer you leave in charge of the ship. It is his orders in case anything should happen to us and we do not return by morning. Also, please triple the strength of the night watch. Run your vessel close under the shadows of the bank, and keep her pitch dark. We are now in the heart of the enemy’s country, and we can’t tell what sort of a lookout he may be keeping.”
While Commander Mitchell was attending to these orders, the doctor sent me below to get a pair of revolvers for each of us. When I returned the three of us entered the launch and put off up the channel.
Slowly and noiselessly we moved ahead in the gathering shadows near shore. The astronomer sat in the bow, silent and alert, gazing constantly ahead through his glasses.
We had proceeded scarcely fifteen minutes when the doctor suddenly ordered the launch stopped. Handing his binoculars to me and pointing ahead beyond a sharp bend we were just rounding, he exclaimed excitedly:
“Look!”
I did so, and to my astonishment saw a great steamship lying at a wharf!
Commander Mitchell now had brought his glasses into use, and a moment later he leaped to his feet, exclaiming:
“My God, men! That’s the vanished Pacific liner Nippon!”
An instant more and I also had discerned the name, standing out in white letters against the black stern. Soon I made a second discovery that thrilled me with amazement: faint columns of smoke were rising from the vessel’s funnels, as if she were manned by a crew and ready to sail!