ed, that we were somewhere off
the coast of Peru. The wind, which had been blowing fitfully from the
east, suddenly veered around into the south, and presently we felt a
sudden chill.

"Peru!" snorted Olson. "When were yez after smellin' iceber-rgs off
Peru?"

Icebergs! "Icebergs, nothin'!" exclaimed one of the Englishmen. "Why,
man, they don't come north of fourteen here in these waters."

"Then," replied Olson, "ye're sout' of fourteen, me b'y."

We thought he was crazy; but he wasn't, for that afternoon we sighted a
great berg south of us, and we'd been running north, we thought, for
days. I can tell you we were a discouraged lot; but we got a faint
thrill of hope early the next morning when the lookout bawled down the
open hatch: "Land! Land northwest by west!"

I think we were all sick for the sight of land. I know that I was; but
my interest was quickly dissipated by the sudden illness of three of
the Germans. Almost simultaneously they commenced vomiting. They
couldn't suggest any explanation for it. I asked them what they had
eaten, and found they had eaten nothing other than the food cooked for
all of us. "Have you drunk anything?" I asked, for I knew that there
was liquor aboard, and medicines in the same locker.

"Only water," moaned one of them. "We all drank water together this
morning. We opened a new tank. Maybe it was the water."

I started an investigation which revealed a terrifying condition--some
one, probably Benson, had poisoned all the running water on the ship.
It would have been worse, though, had land not been in sight. The
sight of land filled us with renewed hope.

Our course had been altered, and we were rapidly approaching what
appeared to be a precipitous headland. Cliffs, seemingly rising
perpendicularly out of the sea, faded away into the mist upon either
hand as we approached. The land before us might have been a continent,
so mighty appeared the shoreline; yet we knew that we must be thousands
of miles from the nearest western land-mass--New Zealand or Australia.

We took our bearings with our crude and inaccurate instruments; we
searched the chart; we cudgeled our brains; and at last it was Bradley
who suggested a solution. He was in the tower and watching the
compass, to which he called my attention. The needle was pointing
straight toward the land. Bradley swung the helm hard to starboard. I
could feel the U-33 respond, and yet the arrow still clung st