Chapter II: Descent Into the Unknown

The Miami now proceeded to eat up latitude at a rate that would have indicated a perfectly phenomenal speed for the ship if the curvature of the earth, where they were, were such that some seventy miles equaled one degree, as would be the case in the inhabited portions of the globe.

Eighty-nine degrees, eighty-eight, eighty-seven, were successively indicated by the sextant.

A night shift was put at the wheel and the engine and the rest turned in. When they awoke, it was noon. The captain estimated that they were well below eighty degrees, as the sun had set behind them.

"If we are still on the outer surface of the earth," said Ferreira hesitantly, "we'll strike Siberia to-morrow at this rate. But I'm beginning to believe the truth of that story which the boss read us."

The wind blew from dead ahead, and was quite warm.

By midnight, the sun was well up in the sky, and a sextant-reading showed that they had reached latitude 60°. In spite of the bright sun, the northern lights now showed brilliantly to the south of them.

"According to our clock," announced the Portuguese, "we are on the 120th meridian. At 60° north latitude, 120° east longitude, we ought, by rights just now, to be crossing southern Siberia, and about to enter Manchuria. And yet here it is open sea! Furthermore, we can't have come as far as thirty normal degrees of latitude in this short time. So I guess this cock-and-bull magazine yarn must be the truth, after all."

"According to our clocks it's midnight," remarked Murphy, "and yet look at the sun! And last noon, it was pitch dark. This has daylight saving beat a mile for complications!"

"But you forget," explained Captain Ferreira, "that we are on the other side of the earth now, where night is day and day is night."

"Then let's shift our clocks," suggested some one, "and start going to bed when it's dark and getting up when it's light."

"You forget," objected Scarface, "that we are not on the other side of the earth, at all. We are passing over the rim of the polar hole into the center of the earth. And, if the story is correct, it will soon be noon all day long every day."

"What I can't figure out," interjected Tom Jones, "is why the sun doesn't rise in the west and set in the east, now that we are inside the polar rim."

"It does," replied Ferreira.

"No such thing," exclaimed Tom, shocked out of his usual politeness. "Look here. When the sun rose, I faced north, and the sun rose on my right. Right hand is east, when you face north, isn't it?"

"Not when you've gone over the top and got inside the earth," explained the captain. "You see, when you're inside the earth, the sun rises in the west; but, as the west is now on the right-hand side of you when facing north, everything looks natural, just as before."

"It all depends on how you define 'east' and 'west,' doesn't it?" Tom objected, still unconvinced. "How would you define them?"

* * * * *

"Suppose you had pasteboard globe representing the earth," explained Ferreira, "the kind you get in school, you know."

"Yes?" said Tom, interestedly.

"Well, on the outside of the earth, 'east' means the direction toward which the surface of the earth is turning, doesn't it? Let's imagine you draw an arrow on the globe, representing east."

"Yes."

"Well, suppose you open up the globe to get a look at the inside of the pasteboard, which would represent where we are now, and suppose you draw an arrow on the inside, in exactly the same direction as the arrow on the outside, its head just under the head of the outside arrow, tail under tail. This inside arrow would point east, too, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, if it's drawn as you describe," Jones admitted.

Then triumphantly, "That inside arrow would point to the left of north; and so east is to the left of north inside the earth."

"Oh, I see," interjected Jimmy, with a snicker. "East is west and west is east, and never the twain shall meet."

"Not at all!" replied Ferreira testily, nettled by his chief's levity. "Here I get converted to your theory, and explain it logically, and then you go and make fun of it."

"Well, it's all clear as mud to me," asserted Little Arty. "Let's eat."

Sun setting in the morning, and rising in the evening. Sun setting in the east and rising in the west. East and west reversed from where they should be. It was all wrong!

"Fortunately this won't last long," said Tom, "or we'd go crazy."

The ship plowed on in darkness lit by the pink beams of the aurora borealis. And the location of the aurora was all wrong, too, lying south of them instead of north.

No stars showed in the southern part of the sky. It was as though a great bowl was gradually closing over the heavens from the south, slowly blotting the stars out with a distinct line of advance. And the edge of this bowl was faintly illumined, like the surface of the moon.

When next the sun rose, it rose from behind the rim of this bowl, rather than from the horizon. And then they observed what they had not noted before--that although there was a well-defined horizon ahead of them and behind them, which looked abnormally near, yet on each side of them the sea seemed to stretch away forever, curving up rather than down, until it merged into the sky in the distance.

Of course! To each side of them stretched the inside surface of the earth, curving ever upward; whereas behind and in front of them the water bent sharply across the edge of the polar rim.

By midnight, when the sun was almost overhead, their reading showed 25° latitude, and yet they knew that they were only a few miles inside the earth.

Soon the sun set behind the opposite edge of the rim, which by now had enveloped nearly half the sky. As they chugged on, they anxiously awaited its reappearance on their left, but it never reappeared. Instead, about fifteen hours later, a new and redder orb showed above the southern horizon, and rose slowly as they sped toward it.

"The central sun!" cried Jimmy.

Yet, in spite of their reading, it was hard to persuade some of them that they had not turned off their course; for a sun, by rights, ought to rise in the east or, at least, in the west, in this topsy-turvy world, rather than in the south.

Their gyro-compass, however, showed that they were still headed due south, and their gyro latitude-indicator appeared to show that they were a bit below the equator. Yet the climate was merely temperate; and whenever the wind blew from the north, quite chilly; in other words, like spring or fall in Massachusetts or Chicago.

* * * * *

Land now appeared; many small islands among which the Miami threaded her way.

Some of the larger islands they explored, but found nothing of interest except some quite sizable rodents which they killed for meat. Tom was thrilled at this new world, of whose existence he had never dreamed, but this did not prevent him from keeping constantly on the alert for a chance to escape or regain control of the yacht. Scarface, however, never left Tom or any of Tom's former employees on the Miami, without making sure that they were outnumbered by fully-armed men of his own.

Scarface himself was as interested as Tom in this new world. So was Captain Antone Ferreira. But the rest of the party appeared either indifferent or bored. Nick Fratelli kept his views to himself.

One day they were resting after their return from an exploring expedition on shore. Arty was trying to get Sydney, Australia, his favorite station, on the air, with Friday as an attentive listener. But he didn't have any luck.

"It's no use," Arty asserted sadly. "Can't hardly get a thing now. Ever since we passed that place which Ferreira calls 90°, I've been having more trouble with the set. First all the little stations faded out. And then things kept on getting worse and worse, until to-day I can't tune in on even WEAF, KDKA or WLW. All I've got left now is WGY, I suppose on account of its extra-short wave."

"Ain't that awful!" snorted Nick the Rat, with mock sympathy. "What do you expect us to do about it? Weep?"

Arty gave him a black look, but said nothing. He was used to Nick's gibes at his interest in radio. Nick left the room.

The little ex-jockey continued twiddling the knobs. Scarface sat in his private cabin, reading. Charley Loy was in the galley. Nick Fratelli and little Terry were in the bunk room. The rest of the crew were variously employed, and all was quiet.

But things didn't stay quiet long. It was the lull before the storm. A loud commotion was heard in the bunk room, and then Nick rushed out, with his face streaming blood.

"That damn little cat scratched me!" he snarled.

"Tabby?" asked Arty incredulously.

"Tabby, me eye!" replied Nick. "It was Terry Ferreira."

"Well," drawled Arty, "what were you doing to him?"

"Him?" exclaimed Nick scornfully; but just then the child burst through the door with cheeks aflame, and shouted: "You beast--I'll teach you to get fresh with me. Can't you leave a girl alone?"

"Girl?" gasped Arty.

"Sure she's a girl," grinned Nick, "and she's going to be my girl, too. I seen her first. But she's a young wild cat, and will have to be tamed."

* * * * *

"Your girl?" sneered Terry, "You dirty bum! I'd rather have even Charley Loy or Friday for my boy-friend than you."

"I'll teach you to talk back to me!" shouted Nick, advancing menacingly toward her.

"None of that, Rat!" snapped Arty. "Come on, Friday."

As the two leaped between Terry and her tormentor, a door at the other end of the mess-room opened.

"Well," said a calm and level voice, "what's the disturbance?"

It was Scarface.

"Nick has insulted a lady, and so we was rescuing her," explained Arty.

"She's mine!" asserted Nick belligerently. "I seen her first."

"Lady? She?" inquired their chief in a bewildered voice.

"Me," said Terry, proud of being the cause of so much commotion.

Scarface advanced into the center of the room.

"You--a girl?" he asked.

"Sure," answered little Terry. "What did you think I was? Besides, no one ever asked you to take me on this trip; I was shanghaied, I never told you I wasn't a girl, did I? And this has all been such fun, until that beast started to get mushy."

"Well, I'll be--" began Arty, but words failed him.

"Then your name isn't Terry?" asked Scarface.

"Sure it is," she replied. "Theresa Ferreira. Terry, for short. But, Mr. Jimmy, you'll keep that wop away from me, won't you?"

"Keeping bums away from ladies is one of the easiest things I do," asserted Scarface. "You will occupy my stateroom."

"Ah," sneered Nick the Rat, "so you want her for yourself, do you? Well, I seen her first; and let me tell you, Scarface--"

He stopped abruptly. He was looking into the muzzle of an automatic.