ngs taken. Twenty-four fathoms deep was added to the
report of the action, and a few days later a diver reported having found
the wreck of the U-C 00.

CHAPTER XXIV

MYSTERIES OF THE GREAT SEA WASTES

THE piratical warfare of German submarines produced many sea mysteries.
Some were solved after the lapse of months and even years, while others
will, in all probability, remain unknown until the sea gives up its
dead.

Among the latter may be numbered the curious discovery in the North
Atlantic of a nameless sailing ship, without cargo, identifying papers
or crew, but sound from truck to kelson, and with her two life-boats
stowed neatly inboard and a half-finished meal on the cabin table.
Experts examined this vessel when brought into port, but so far have
been utterly unable to offer any solution or discover any clue, beyond
the fact that she was built and fitted out in some American port and
carried an unusually large crew.

Another similar mystery was the disappearance of a French vessel while
on a voyage to New Orleans and the discovery eleven months afterwards
that she had called for water and food at a small port on the Pacific
coast of South America. No further trace has so far come to light, nor
the reason for her changing course and rounding Cape Horn.

A mystery which remains a mystery to the end of the chapter is likely to
be irritating to the imaginative mind, but to the following occurrence
there came a solution after the lapse of a few weeks.

THE SPECTRE OF THE GOODWINS

It was a pitch-black night, with fine rain driving up from the
south-west. The summer gale which had raged for the past twenty-four
hours had blown itself out, and although the steep seas still retained
their night-caps, the wind came only in fitful gusts. Away to starboard
an indistinct blur of white foam stretched athwart the sea and the dull
roar from the maelstrom of the Goodwins rolled across the miles of
intervening water.

The armed trawler _Curlew_ bravely shouldered her way through each green
comber as it rose to meet her, lurching over the seas in a smother of
spray. Oilskinned figures moved warily along the life-lines, for when a
wave struck her tons of water swept across her slanting decks,
submerging the bulwarks and causing the sturdy ship to groan and tremble
from stem to stern.

In the little bridge-house the dim light from the binnacle shone on the
hard wet face of the commanding officer, who watched t