The Sea Girl By RAY CUMMINGS _Author of “A Brand New World,” “Beyond the Stars,” etc._ _Sunken ships and strange ocean changes presage the mightiest and most unaccountable threat ever made against mankind’s world._ [Transcriber’s Note: This etext was produced from Argosy All-Story Weekly March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, April 6, 1929] “_. . . and he lived with her in a Golden Palace at the bottom of the sea . . ._” CHAPTER I. HUMAN GIRL, OR SIREN? The first of the mysterious sea disasters occurred in March, 1990. It did not seem important; it was given very little publicity. A small, old-fashioned freight vessel of some thirty thousand tons sank in mid-Pacific with the loss of all on board. The ship, which in its day must have been accounted a luxurious passenger liner, had, years ago, been converted to the freight trade, and its weirdly elaborate superstructure long since dismantled. Bound from San Francisco to the Island ports and Dutch East India with a cargo of manufactured foodstuffs for the eastern island markets, it had sunk unexpectedly, and for no apparent cause, at fifteen N degrees and one hundred and sixty-five degrees E, northwest of the Marshall Group. As it happened, I was among the first to receive the call of distress. My name is Geoffry Grant. I was twenty-two years old, that spring of 1990. They say that ours is the generation of youthful achievement; even so, I think I had done fairly well, for I was chief officer then, second in command of the largest vessel of the Sub-Pacific Freighters. Our line was newly established to supersede the ancient surface vessels whose passengers were nearly all traveling by air. We were in fourteen degrees N and one hundred and sixty-five degrees twenty minutes E, on the return voyage, with Honolulu our next port of call, running in the thirty fathom lane, when the distress signal from so near at hand reached us. It was very nearly midnight. The surface was wholly calm; the night darkly overcast with a pallid moon. We had been up at 9 P.M. answering an emergency call from one of the great passenger liners flying west. We had hung at the surface for nearly an hour, waiting for them to come along, and another hour pumping up to them the needed fuel. My superior was disgruntled. It put us late for our connections at the Hawaiians; and with our schedule demanding fifty knots there was little chance of us making it up. I was sitting off duty, in my cabin that midnight, listening to young Arturo Plantet drooling on his violin. He was our only passenger. A queer character, this boy; wholly different, physically and temperamentally, from myself, and yet between us there existed a real affection. I am a blond, husky six-footer. Arturo, who at this time was just turned eighteen, was shorter, and almost girlishly frail.