The Project Gutenberg EBook of West Wind Drift, by George Barr McCutcheon

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Title: West Wind Drift

Author: George Barr McCutcheon

Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6014]
Posting Date: March 26, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEST WIND DRIFT ***

Produced by Carrie Fellman

WEST WIND DRIFT

By George Barr McCutcheon

On a bright, still morning in October, the Doraine sailed from a South
American port and turned her glistening nose to the northeast. All told,
there were some seven hundred and fifty souls on board; and there
were stores that filled her holds from end to end,--grain, foodstuffs,
metals, chemicals, rubber and certain sinister things of war. Her
passenger list contained the names of men who had achieved distinction
in world affairs,--in finance, in business, in diplomacy, in war,
besides that less subtle pursuit, adventure: men from both hemispheres,
from all continents. It was a cosmopolitan company that sailed out to
sea that placid day, bound for a port six thousand miles away.

Her departure, heavy-laden, from this South American port was properly
recorded in the then secret annals of a great nation; the world at
large, however, was none the wiser. For those were the days when sly
undersea monsters of German descent were prowling about the oceans,
taking toll of humanity and breeding the curse that was to abide with
their progenitors forever.

Down through the estuary and into the spreading bay slid the big
steamer; abreast the curving coast-line she drove her way for leagues
and leagues, and then swept boldly into the vast Atlantic desert.

Four hundred years ago and more, Amerigo Vespucci had sailed this
unknown southern sea in his doughty caravel; he had wallowed and rocked
for months over a course that the Doraine was asked to cover in the wink
of an eye by comparison. Up from the south he had come in an age when
the seas he sailed were no less strange than the land he touched from
time to time; the blue waste of sky and sea as boundless then as now;
the west wind drift as sure and unfailing; the waves as savage or
as mild; the star by which he lai