The Great Stone of Sardis   By: Frank Richard Stockton (1834-1902)

BY FRANK R. STOCKTON

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUTERPE THALIA

II. THE SARDIS WORKS

III. MARGARET RALEIGH

IV. THE MISSION OF SAMUEL BLOCK V. UNDER WATER

VI. VOICES FROM THE POLAR SEAS

VII. GOOD NEWS GOES FROM SARDIS

VIII. THE DEVIL ON THE DIPSEY

IX. THE ARTESIAN RAY

X. "LAKE SHIVER"

XI. THEY BELIEVE IT IS THE POLAR SEA

XII. CAPTAIN HUBBELL TAKES COMMAND

XIII. LONGITUDE EVERYTHING

XIV. A REGION OF NOTHINGNESS

XV. THE AUTOMATIC SHELL

XVI. THE TRACK OF THE SHELL

XVII. CAPTAIN HUBBELL DECLINES TO GO WHALING

XVIII. MR. MARCY'S CANAL

XIX. THE ICY GATEWAY

XX. "THAT IS HOW I LOVE YOU"

XXI. THE CAVE OF LIGHT

XXII. CLEWE'S THEORY

XXIII. THE LAST DIVE OF THE DIPSEY

XXIV. ROVINSKI COMES TO THE SURFACE

XXV. LAURELS

THE GREAT STONE OF SARDIS

CHAPTER I. THE ARRIVAL OF THE EUTERPE THALIA

It was about noon of a day in early summer that a westward bound Atlantic liner was rapidly nearing the port of New York. Not long before, the old light house on Montauk Point had been sighted, and the company on board the vessel were animated by the knowledge that in a few hours they would be at the end of their voyage.

The vessel now speeding along the southern coast of Long Island was the Euterpe Thalia, from Southampton. On Wednesday morning she had left her English port, and many of her passengers were naturally anxious to be on shore in time to transact their business on the last day of the week. There were even some who expected to make their return voyage on the Melpomene Thalia, which would leave New York on the next Monday.

The Euterpe Thalia was one of those combination ocean vessels which had now been in use for nearly ten years, and although the present voyage was not a particularly rapid one, it had been made in a little less than three days.

As may be easily imagined, a vessel like this was a very different craft from the old steamers which used to cross the Atlantic "ocean greyhounds" they were called in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

It would be out of place here to give a full description of the vessels which at the period of our story, in 1947, crossed the Atlantic at an average time of three days, but an idea of their construction will suffice. Most of these vessels belonged to the class of the Euterpe Thalia, and were, in fact, compound marine structures, the two portions being entirely distinct from each other. The great hull of each of these vessels contained nothing but its electric engines and its propelling machinery, with the necessary fuel and adjuncts.

The upper portion of the compound vessel consisted of decks and quarters for passengers and crew and holds for freight. These were all comprised within a vast upper hull, which rested upon the lower hull containing the motive power, the only point of contact being an enormous ball and socket joint. Thus, no matter how much the lower hull might roll and pitch and toss, the upper hull remained level and comparatively undisturbed.

Not only were comfort to passengers and security to movable freight gained by this arrangement of the compound vessel, but it was now possible to build the lower hull of much less size than had been the custom in the former days of steamships, when the hull had to be large enough to contain everything. As the more modern hull held nothing but the machinery, it was small in comparison with the superincumbent upper hull, and thus the force of the engine, once needed to propel a vast mass through the resisting medium of the ocean, was now employed upon a comparatively small hull, the great body of the vessel meeting with no resistance except that of the air.