MOUNT BERMUDA 



In the West Indies and Antilles, seven or eight 

 hundred miles to the south, there were scores of 

 neighbourly outlets which nosed their way up from 

 the bottom into light and air, and far across the 

 Atlantic, twenty-five hundred miles east, the vol- 

 canic constellation of the Azores broke surface. 



Here in complete isolation, at the bidding of 

 some deep-hidden geological whim, the lava began 

 to ooze forth, and after an inconceivable chemical 

 battle with the icy waters two miles down, piled up 

 the scarlet, molten rock from the very vitals of 

 Mother Earth, pitting its three thousand degrees 

 of sheer heat against the all but freezing point of 

 the water, backed by two tons of pressure to the 

 inch. As far as we know today ( and this knowledge 

 barely creeps across the line from the illimitable 

 Land of Minus) this mountain reached the surface 

 with one peak, to a southernmost particle of which 

 I was now clinging. But on the slopes of this great 

 submarine massif, two mighty cones stretched 

 themselves up — so high that they made of Ber- 

 muda almost a trio of island centers. Today they 

 are known as the Challenger and Argus Banks, 

 flat-topped peaks, fifteen and thirty miles off 

 shore and only a few fathoms beneath the surface. 

 I have dredged the former from the Arcturus and 

 gleaned a great mass of seaweed and reef animals, 

 and I have fished it from the Gladisf en and found 

 it aboil with sharks. This is Bermuda mountain as 

 we know it today. 



But, to go back, here was I blinded and sur- 



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