bound to the quarterdeck, and a moment later the skipper
shouted quick orders that the crew could not understand for
the life of them. For to heave the ship to, just when we all
had been whistling for enough breeze to give her something
more than steerage way, seemed nothing short of insane. Acuma
climbed to the maintop and looked at the coast of Peru with a
telescope, and the captain took bearings with his
instruments.

It was Acuma and I who went over the side in diving suits,
for no others save the captain knew what we sought, as I have
said. Down I went and down, with the weight of water crushing
ever more strongly against me, till I stood upon the sea's
floor. That in itself was quite wonderful enough--the green
whiteness of the sand and the strange, multi-colored forest
of weed and coral through which my searchlight bored a
single, luminous pathway. But right ahead, looming and
wavering, seen for an instant, lost again when a deep
vibration stirred and swayed the water, shone the faintly
golden shape of a great portal. Acuma I had lost sight of,
but I had no need to ask him what lay before me. The wild
pounding of my heart told me that I stood at the gateway of
the city that had been covered a thousand thousand years ago
by the unheeding sea. Leaning at an angle against the tide, I
struggled forward till the great gate towered above me, its
arch half lost in the green, swimming shadow of the water.
But as I flashed my light up across its pillars, it answered
with the shifting sparkle of gems crusted thick upon it.

I walked then, breathless, into a street paved with rough