d his course as far away and
immutable,--but he came in 1501 and his ship was alone in the trackless
ocean.

The mighty Doraine was not alone; she sailed a sea whose every foot was
charted, whose every depth was sounded. She sailed in an age of Titans,
while the caravel was a frolicksome pygmy, dancing to the music of a
thousand winds, buffeted today, becalmed tomorrow, but always a snail on
the face of the waters. Four hundred years ago Vespucci and his men were
lost in the wilderness of waves. Out of touch with the world were they
for months,--aye, even years,--and no man knew whither they sailed nor
whence they came, for those were the days when the seven seas kept their
secrets better than they keep them now.

Into the path traversed by the lowly caravel steamed the towering
Doraine, pointing her gleaming nose to the north and east.

She was never seen again.

Out from the lairs of the great American navy sped the swiftest
hounds of the ocean. They swept the face of the waters with a thousand
sleepless eyes; they called with the strange, mysterious voice that
carries a thousand miles; they raked the sea as with a fine-tooth comb;
they searched the coast of a continent; they penetrated its rivers,
circled its islands, scanned its rocks and reefs,--and asked a single
question that had but one reply from every ship that sailed the southern
sea.

For months ships of all nations searched for the missing steamer. Not so
much as the smallest piece of wreckage rewarded the ceaseless quest. The
great vessel, with all its precious cargo, had slipped into its niche
among the profoundest mysteries of the sea. Came the day, therefore,
when the Secretary of the Navy wrote down against her name the ugly
sentence: "Lost with all on board."

Maritime courts issued their decrees; legatees parcelled estates, great
and small; insurance companies paid in hard cash for the lives that
were lost, and went blandly about their business; more than one widow
reconsidered her thoughts of self-denial; and ships again sailed the
course of Amerigo Vespucci without a thought of the Doraine.

For months the newspapers in many lands speculated on the fate of the
missing liner. That a great ship could disappear from the face of the
waters in these supreme days of navigation without leaving so much as
a trace behind was inconceivable. At first there were tales of the
dastardly U-boats; then came the sinister reports of treachery on board
resul