"Alan Dean Foster - With friends like these." - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

that the expedition was forced to remain there for such an extended period of time so as to permit
the repair of storm damage to their craft.
A letter to the man mentioned in that missive as the repairman, a Senor Juan Maria y Florez,
brought as a reply a note scrawled in an awkward hand, as though the wielder of the pen were
unfamiliar with its use. Of the professors it had little to say, except that he, Florez, had
always thought of professors as being very composed individuals, and that these two Americans
seemed both nervous and jumpy. Instead he dwelt on the damage to their schooner, which was totally
alien to him, a man who had worked on ships for over forty years. For example, he mentions that he
did not feel Professor Turner's explanation of an "unexpected heavy swell" entirely accounted for
the odd twisting of the four-inch steel bar of the schooner's left drive shaft, nor for how three
of the four blades came to be broken off the screw. A local shipman in Long Beach assures me that
Mr. Florez, despite his forty years, is here doubtless indulging a natural penchant for native
exaggeration.
The first of these letters, dated February 11, includes in longhand the note "40 degrees, 9' S,
still on 110. Nothing visible on horiz. but Bob still conf."
This seemingly innocuous bit of information reveals on inspection a number of oddities. It would
seem to indicate that although the letters to home were mailed from February to the middle of May,
they were written not in Valparaiso, but while the professors were still at sea! Why the two men
should do this and then wait to mail the letters at staggered intervals extending over three and a
half months from the date of their arrival in Chile is beyond me. And the latitude given is 40
degrees S. It is quite clear. The "110" can only be the longitude. Thus, it must be inferred from
this information that the ship was proceeding almost due south from Easter Island. But the most
peculiar part of the phrase is the section which states "nothing visible on the horiz.," since
this would seem to imply that perhaps the two men expected that there might be something on the


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horizon. This is blatant nonsense, since a quick glance at any map of the Pacific will suffice to
show even the casual observer that there is nothing present in that section of ocean for hundreds
of miles in any direction, let alone due south! It is interesting to note, though, that this
course was taking them almost directly down the center of the subsurface mountain mass known as
the Easter Island Cordillera.
The next letter carries in its margin the words, "Turned east, following Cook instruc." Once again
consulting the Research Library files, I found that Captain James Cook had indeed passed this same
section of sea in 1773 on his return voyage to England. What is more interesting is the fact that
the following year the captain, usually a dead-accurate navigator, spent some considerable time
wandering about in the area between 40 and 50 degrees latitude, and 120 and 130 degrees longitude.
Certainly he could not have been there searching for something, as the area is as desolate a
stretch of ocean as exists on this world.
The next legible note reads, "129 W, Bob discouraged, turning back w. current." This can only mean
that Professor Nolan did indeed expect to find something in this empty piece of sea and, as one
would anticipate, he had not. Also, the reverse side of the letter contains the admonition, "coord
wrong? check Sydney Bulletin." At the time, this reference held no meaning for me.
There remained only one last notation of any consequence, and I have come to regard that one as
the key to the entire baffling matter. It is at once the clearest and most mystifying of them all,
and consists of three parts. The words, "check Lvcrft ref," some cryptic symbols in Professor
Turner's hand, and one word, written underneath:
"CTHULHU"