by August W. Derleth Of the four men sitting in the captain's cabin on the _S. S. Maine_, three were listening to Captain Henderson, who was talking of storms in general, an apt topic, since the _Maine_ had been driven head on into a raging tropical gale, and was at the moment making very little headway. The four of them, including the captain himself, were somewhat bored, though none of them showed it. Wembler, the business man, had begun to toy with his spectacles, taking them off, folding them, and putting them back on. Allison, the tall, dark man who was ostensibly a writer, occasionally whispered in an undertone to his companion, whose name had been given as Talbot. It was Wembler who broke suddenly into the captain's monologue, "Have we stopped? Doesn't seem as if we were moving at all." The captain shook his head. "No, we've been going very slowly on account of the gale." Then he stopped talking abruptly. "We _have_ stopped," he said, and got up. At the same moment, a sharp rap on the cabin door brought the other three men to attention. The Captain shouted "Come!" A tousled head of red hair first appeared in the small opening, and after it a youngish face that seemed to emerge from the hair. "What is it, Munro?" asked Captain Henderson. "The anchor's gone out, sir--torn out of its holdings by the storm. We can't seem to be able to draw it back. Attached to something, most likely." The captain pondered this a moment, then he made an abrupt gesture with his hand. "Well, leave it until this infernal storm has passed--we weren't making time, anyway. Give the order to shut down the engines. Then try to find out just about where we are, and report back to me." "Very well, sir." The captain sat down again. "Happens once in a lifetime," he explained. He shrugged his shoulders and tried to smile genially; his mood was not for it. "There's nothing to be done." His listeners nodded sympathetically. Then the four of them sat in silence until another rap on the cabin door brought them again to alertness. Again Munro appeared in response to the captain's call. "I've inquired of the first mate, sir," he said, "as to our bearings. He has no idea where we are. He's asked the radio operator to broadcast to see what he can get. We are somewhere about the Moluccas, he thinks, or more probably Java. Seems to be something wrong with our compasses, sir." The captain nodded ponderously. "Most likely the storm, or some other magnetic influence. You may go, Munro, but if anything crops up, report to me immediately." Munro vanished, drawing the cabin door shut behind him. The captain shook his head dolefully and waited to see whether one of the other men might say something. No one ventured; so he began once more. "I didn't think we had got as far as Java," he said. "But you can't ever tell--" Wembler looked up suddenly and spoke. "Say, isn't this the twenty-seventh of February?"