efore
dawn, Captain Higgins ordered another catapulted into the sky, to search
the surrounding area. This plane went aloft. It was not attacked or
molested. The pilot, by radio, reported the presence of a large body of
land very near. Navigators, consulting their charts, discovered that
this body of land was not on any of their maps.

Dawn, that hour of danger when an attack might reasonably be expected,
came. The crew of the Idaho stood by their guns, waiting. No attack
came.

The sun rose. Still there was no attack. The ship, moving very slowly,
entered an area where the surface of the sea seemed to have turned to
silver. This effect was caused by some oily substance that floated on
the water, a new phenomenon to officers and men alike.

On the horizon the land mass the pilot of the scouting plane had
reported was dimly visible, a range of forested hills sloping upward to
mountains in the background, the rim of some mighty continent of the old
time. Later, millions of years later, only the tops of these mountains
would remain above the sea, to form the thousands of islands of the
Pacific.

* * * * *

Craig breakfasted below. He came on deck just as the alarm sounded. The
crew raced to their stations. He discovered the cause of the alarm.

Overhead, at a height of thirty to thirty-five thousand feet, was a
plane. It was shadowing the ship. It made no attempt to attack. Craig
went to the bridge. Captain Higgins had been on the bridge all night. He
was still there. He greeted Craig wanly.

"We're being watched," Higgins said. "I don't like it."

"Anything we can do about it?"

Higgins squinted upward through his glasses. "Too high for ack-ack. No,
there is nothing we can do about it. And I'm not sure we want to do
anything about it."

"What do you mean?"

"We're not fighting a war here in _this_ time," the captain answered.
"We don't want to fight, if we can possibly avoid it."

"It may be a problem to avoid fighting," Craig said. "Remember, they
shot down the pilot of your scouting plane."

"I remember," Higgins said grimly.

"Of course, we could surrender," Craig suggested.

"How would you like to go to hell?" Higgins said.

"It was only an idea," Craig grinned. "But I don't like this business.
We don't know what we're trying to avoid fighting, or what strength they
have, or how they will attack, if they attack."

"I don't like it either," Higgins answered. "But I di