LOS CORONADOS 209 



out of a poorly equipped vessel. There was not a 

 breath of wind, yet these extraordinary waves came 

 piling after us for twenty minutes, when we ran out 

 of them. If any one of them had broken, it certainly 

 would have played havoc with the yacht. The worst 

 cyclone I ever saw nearly dismasted the frigate Dale, 

 upon which I was a midshipman. I never saw so 

 high or so menacing a sea; I attributed it in my igno- 

 rance to an earthquake, but when we reached Avalon 

 no one had felt a shock, and for a long time it was a 

 mystery. One day I glanced at a chart, and on that 

 identical spot was the summit of a submarine moun- 

 tain, the lava peak ranging from twenty-sLx to seventy 

 fathoms below the surface and covering a large area, 

 rising out of water half a mile deep. It was named 

 "Osborne Bank," and the big waves were occasioned 

 by the currents and conflicting tides about this "lost 

 island" lying unsuspected below us. 



I related this incident to the captain of the Cabrillo, 

 the steamer plying between Los Angeles and Avalon, 

 which suggested strange experiences at sea. The cap- 

 tain told me that when sailing from China to San 

 Francisco, one night, suddenly and without warning 

 the man at the wheel saw the compass climb entirely 

 around at a rapid rate. The ship was taken aback 

 and thrown into irons, but she screwed entirely around, 

 to the amazement, not to say terror, of the crew. This 

 was doubtless a whirlpool in the ocean, a maelstrom 

 in the Pacific. 



Less than five miles from Bishop's Rock on the Cor- 

 tez Bank the ocean is nearly a mile deep. So the two 

 "lost islands" are really sharp pinnacles rising like 

 needles from the deep sea. Whether these lost islands 



