"034 (B014) - The Fantastic Island (1935-12) - Ryerson Johnson" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Right now, the yacht was rolling in a huge ground swell, rolling alarmingly. Rivets strained and bulkheads creaked. There was at least half a gale blowing, and it made noises in the rigging like the sighs of dying men.



Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks was commonly called "Ham," a name which he did not like. He now frowned darkly and made his way to the pitching bridge.



"This is dangerous," he snapped. "We may run onto a reef any minute."



"Don't I know it?" a surprisingly childlike voice retorted from the semidarkness of the bridge. "This ground swell is bad -- mighty bad. When it piles up like this, it means the water is getting shallow."



Ham snapped, "But I thought you said -- "



"Something screwy," piped the childlike voice. "According to your log, we're supposed to have more than a hundred miles between us and the. nearest land."



A young woman joined them on the bridge. She was a very striking young woman to look at, having not only a lovely face, but hair of a very unusual bronze color and eyes which actually looked golden. She was Patricia Savage, who loved excitement.



"I wish you'd ask your old ocean to behave," she requested, cheerfully. "I've been thrown out of my bunk three times in the last fifteen minutes. I gave it up."



"Something is wrong, Pat," Ham told her. "We're getting into a big ground swell. That means we are near land, or at least in shoal water. And that is very much impossible."



Pat walked over to the second man on the bridge.

"Just what is the trouble, Monk?" she asked.



The man addressed as "Monk" sat in the shadows, hunched like a bulky Buddha over an audio-frequency amplifier. His thick hands indicated the apparatus containing vacuum tubes for increasing the voltage and power of radio beacon signals.



"These direction-finding doodads have gone plain haywire," he insisted in that small squeaky voice.