Her departure, heavy-laden, from this South American port was
properly recorded in the then secret annals of a great nation; the
world at large, however, was none the wiser. For those were the
days when sly undersea monsters of German descent were prowling
about the oceans, taking toll of humanity and breeding the curse
that was to abide with their progenitors forever.

Down through the estuary and into the spreading bay slid the
big steamer; abreast the curving coast-line she drove her way for
leagues and leagues, and then swept boldly into the vast Atlantic
desert.

Four hundred years ago and more, Amerigo Vespucci had sailed this
unknown southern sea in his doughty caravel; he had wallowed and
rocked for months over a course that the Doraine was asked to cover
in the wink of an eye by comparison. Up from the south he had come
in an age when the seas he sailed were no less strange than the
land he touched from time to time; the blue waste of sky and sea as
boundless then as now; the west wind drift as sure and unfailing;
the waves as savage or as mild; the star by which he laid 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