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 resulting in the ship being taken over by German
plotters, with the prediction that she would emerge from oblivion
as a well-armed "raider" cruising in the North Atlantic; then the
generally accepted theory that she had been swiftlv, suddenly rent
asunder by a mighty explosion in her hold. All opinions, all theories,
all conjectures, however, revolved about a single fear;--that she
was the victim of a German plot. But in the course of events there
came a day when the German Navy, ever boastful of its ignoble deeds,
issued the positive and no doubt sincere declaration that it had
no record of the sinking of the Doraine. The fate of the ship was
as much of a mystery to the German admiralty as it was to the rest
of the puzzled world.

And so it was that the Doraine, laden with nearly a thousand souls,
sailed out into the broad Atlantic and was never heard from again.






CHAPTER I