I. INSIDE THE WRECK 169 II. ALONG THE CABLE 189 III. SIDE BY SIDE 209 IV. THE BATTLE 223 V. THE CHIEF'S REWARD 242 VI. HELL ON EARTH 265 VII. THE FIGHT FOR THE GOLD 282 VIII. THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR THE NEW TERRITORIES 301 PART THE FIRST The Tremendous Event CHAPTER I THE SUIT "Oh, but this is terrible!" cried Simon Dubosc. "Edward, just listen!" And the young Frenchman, drawing his friend away from the tables arranged in little groups on the terraces of the club-house, showed him, in the late edition of the _Argus_, which a motorcyclist had just brought to the New Golf Club, this telegram, printed in heavy type: "BOULOGNE, _20 May_.--The master and crew of a fishing-vessel which has returned to harbour declare that this morning, at a spot mid-way between the French and English coasts, they saw a large steamer lifted up by a gigantic waterspout. After standing on end with her whole length out of the water, she pitched forward and disappeared in the space of a few seconds. "Such violent eddies followed and the sea, until then quite calm, was affected by such abnormal convulsions that the fishermen had to row their hardest to avoid being dragged into the whirlpool. The naval authorities are sending a couple of tugs to the site of the disaster." "Well, Rolleston, what do you think of it?" "Terrible indeed!" replied the Englishman. "Two days ago, the _Ville de Dunkerque_. To-day another ship, and in the same place. There's a coincidence about it. . . ." "That's precisely what a second telegram says," exclaimed Simon, continuing to read: "3. O. P. M.--The steamer sunk between Folkestone and Boulogne is the transatlantic liner _Brabant_, of the Rotterdam-Amerika Co., carrying twelve hundred passengers and a crew of eight hundred. No survivors have been picked up. The bodies of the drowned are beginning to rise to the surface. "There is no doubt that this terrifying calamity, like the loss of the _Ville de Dunkerque_ two days ago, was caused by one of those mysterious phenomena which have been disturbing the Straits of Dover during the past week and in which a number of vessels were nearly lost, before the sinking of the _Brabant_ and the _Ville de Dunkerque_."