Chapter 5 CHAPTER V OF THE WONDERFUL THINGS HAPPENING AWAY AWAYS OF NEW ENGLAND

While the newspapers were full of these rumors, I returned to Washington.Upon arrival, I went straight to Mr. Ward's office, but failed to see him.He had been on a sudden leave of absence for several weeks due to family matters.He obviously already knew that my mission was unfinished.The newspapers, especially those in North Carolina, have given us extensive coverage of our recent ascent of Mount Airy. Naturally, this waiting displeased me, and I was all the more restless because of my unquenchable curiosity.I have no idea what to do next.Should we just give up on revealing the secret of Aili Jufeng?never!

If necessary, and even if I still fail, I will challenge Airi Kyoho, even dozens of times. Undoubtedly, it is impossible for human beings to climb to the top of its perilous peak. You can go up the peak along the scaffolding, or dig a tunnel from the inside.Our engineers deal with many difficult things every day.In this matter, however, it is necessary to take account of the disproportionately disproportionate sums invested, which can easily increase over time.A tunnel would cost tens of thousands of dollars, but besides satisfying the curiosity of the public and myself, what good would it do?

My personal resources are totally inadequate for this project, and Mr. Ward, who has the authority to dispose of the government funds, is not in Washington.I'm even going to try to convince some millionaires to take an interest in it.It would be nice if I could assure them that there are gold and silver mines on the mountain.but.This assumption is difficult for them to accept.The Appalachians are not in a goldfield, as are the mountains of the Pacific Ocean, or Mount De La Trova, or Australia. On June 15, Mr. Ward returned to Washington for work.Although I failed to announce the success to him, he received me warmly.

"Nice to meet you, Strack, you sweet boy." He greeted me loudly as soon as I entered the door. "Our darling Strucker, return in vain!" "Mr. Ward, it's not as easy as if you ordered me to explore the surface of the moon," I replied. "We find that we are confronted with difficulties of natural origin, which are beyond our power to overcome." "Mr. Strack, I believe so. I have no doubts. But the important thing is that you find out that nothing is happening in the heart of Airy Peak at the moment." "Mr. Ward, nothing happened."

"Did you see any signs of fire?" "No." "Didn't you hear any suspicious noises?" "No." "Whether there are volcanoes there is still not certain?" "Yes, Mr. Ward. But if there is a volcano there, we have every reason to believe that it is perfectly asleep." "But," countered Mr. Ward, "there's no reason why it should wake up any day. Strucker, it's not enough to just put the volcano to sleep, it has to be absolutely extinguished—unless these lurid rumors are nothing more than The imagination of the people of the Carolinas."

"That can't be done, Mr. Commissioner," said I. "Mr. Smith and the Mayor of Morganton and his friend the Mayor of Pleasant Fields are men who can be relied upon. They speak of what they saw with their own eyes. There is indeed a fire on the giant mountain of Airi, and strange and suspicious sounds are indeed heard from there. There is absolutely no doubt about the authenticity of these phenomena." "If this is the case," said Mr. Ward, "the evidence is irrefutable, I admit. The only inference that can be drawn is that the secret of Mount Airy remains a mystery."

"Mr. Ward, if we are determined to expose this secret, we will succeed. The key to decision-making is expenditure. As long as there are cross spades and explosives, it will be easy to break through the cliff cliff." "Needless to say," replied Mr. Ward, "but it seems unlikely that such a course of action should be taken at this time, as the mountain is at present safe and sound. We shall have to wait and see, perhaps, that Nature herself will reveal her secrets." "Mr. Ward, I beg your pardon, but I deeply regret not being able to fulfill the great trust you have placed in me," I said.

"Nonsense! Strucker, don't bother yourself. Be sensible about this failure. We can't get everything right, not even with the police. How few criminals get away from us! I believe we Will never catch any of them, if they're smart enough, more or less cautious, and, as long as they're not so foolish as to ruin their reputation, nothing seems to me better than plotting a crime Easier. Stealing or assassination can be done without raising any suspicion, or leaving any traces that can be searched. You should understand, Strucker, that I don't want to give criminals any hints. Without a trace, of course, there are many criminals that the police would never catch."

On this point, I completely agree with my boss.It is among the shameless that one finds most of them extremely unwise. It is for this reason that it puzzles me that no one in power has been able to explain the recent phenomenon of "strange things".I did express my perplexity and wonder at the matter when Mr. Ward mentioned it. He pointed out that the strange car could not be traced at all. When it first appeared, it apparently disappeared suddenly on all roads, and it disappeared even before the phone call arrived!Numerous capable police officers have been dispatched to search all over the country, but no one has spotted the intruder.This strange car does not always appear in various places, although its speed is astonishingly fast, it seems to appear only for a moment, and then disappear without a trace.Yes, it finally made an appearance on the full run from Prenyd to Milwaukee, covering two hundred miles in less than an hour and a half.

Since then, however, nothing has been heard about the strange car.When the strange car reached the finish line of the racing car, it could not stop due to the inertia of the speed of the car. Was it really swallowed by the water of Lake Michigan?Can we conclude from this that neither the monster cars nor their drivers exist anymore, and therefore there should be no fear of them?But most of the public is reluctant to accept this view.They all want the monster car to resurface. Mr. Ward freely confessed that all the gossip about the matter seemed to him the more incredible.I agree with this.Evidently, if the phantom driver ceased to appear, his phantom or apparition must have been regarded as some supernatural wonder beyond human comprehension.

Mr. Ward and I have fully discussed the matter.I thought I should take my leave, and after pacing up and down the room for a while, he said suddenly, "Yes, what happened in Milwaukee was very strange. But there is another equally strange thing!" As soon as he had finished speaking, he handed me a report that had just been mailed to him from Boston.The content of this report has recently been disclosed by various evening newspapers, which has greatly interested readers.While I was reading the report, Mr. Ward was out of the office on business.I sat down by the window and studied its contents with great interest. In the waters along the New England region of Maine, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, there have been days of sightings of some kind that no one can exactly describe.A moving thing was emerging in the water about two or three miles from shore, quite fast, and sometimes it swam back and forth in the waves, and then suddenly dived into the water. The lightning speed of the thing makes it impossible to track even high-powered telescopes.Its length does not appear to exceed thirty feet.Its cigar-like shape and light green color make it difficult to recognize in seawater.It has been seen appearing between Cape Cod and the coast of Nova Scotia.From Providence, from Boston, from Portsmouth, and from Portland, motor boats and large motor boats tried more than once to approach it, and even tracked it, but were unable to get near it.Tracking seemed impossible at all.It quickly disappeared from view like an arrow. Naturally, there has been much debate as to what this wonder was.However, none of the hypotheses have convincing evidence.The sailors were as puzzled by this as anyone else.At first, sailors believed it was a whale-like fish.But as we all know, these animals generally surface at a fixed time to breathe and spit out water jets.And this strange animal, if it were an animal—neither "spouted water," as the whalers say, nor produced any sound that breathing might make.But if it doesn't belong to any of these giant sea animals, how do you tell where it belongs?Is it really some species that live on the bottom of the sea as in the legend, the North Sea monster octopus, the sea monster, or the well-known sea monster? Whatever it was, however, the small fishing schooners and pleasure boats dared not travel farther than this monster was already on the waters of New Grande.Whenever it appears, boats and boats have to gallop to the nearest harbor to hide.If the animal is ferocious in nature, no one wants to take it lightly and wait for it to attack. Large ships and ships, but not afraid of anything like whales or other sea giants.Several large ships had seen the monster from miles away.But when they tried to approach, the monster fled quickly.Even one day, after an extremely fast American gunboat set off from Boston Harbor, let alone whether its purpose was to track down the monster, the gunboat fired at least several shells at the monster.Almost at the same time, the monster suddenly disappeared, and the gunboat had no choice but to sigh.Even so, the monster had no intention of trying to counter the gunboat or the sailors. Just then, Mr. Ward came back into his office, and I interrupted my reading to say to him: "There doesn't seem to be any reason at present to condemn the danger of this sea monster. It flees when it hits a ship. It doesn't force itself Tracking boats, the senses and intelligence of fish animals are not obvious." "However, they can still be provoked, Strucker, especially if their survival is seriously jeopardized—" "But, Mr. Ward, the monster doesn't seem to be that scary at all. There are only two outcomes. Either it will leave the ocean immediately and escape, or it will be captured and we can look at it at the Washington Museum at our leisure." Do some research." "But what if it's not a marine animal?" asked Mr. Ward. "Couldn't it be something else?" I asked in amazement. "When you finish reading it," said Mr. Ward. I read on and found that in the second part of the report, my supervisor had marked certain paragraphs with red pencil. For a while, no one doubted that the monster was not an animal, and that, if it was hard enough, it would eventually be driven from the sea, but another opinion arose, and people began to think that if it were not a fish, it would be Could it be some new and distinctive ship. Doubtless, if that was the case, its engine must have been extraordinarily powerful.It may also be the case that the inventor of this monster, trying to attract public attention and shock the shipbuilding world, before selling his patents, must make it so that the boat sails with impeccable agility and The speed of the ship is like an arrow, and it can get rid of any pursuit.Of course, this kind of ship will inevitably arouse the curiosity and envy of the whole world! At that time, great strides had been made in the manufacture of marine engines.The transoceanic liner completed the intercontinental voyage in five days.Naval architects do not think that this progress has reached its limit, let alone that the whole navy is not behind in this respect; the engines on cruisers, torpedo boats, and torpedo destroyers are the same as those on the fastest freighters cruising the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Engines are comparable. However, if it is indeed a new type of boat, people have not yet had the opportunity to see its appearance.As for the engines that drive it, their power must have greatly exceeded any highest power hitherto known.For the ship had no sails, nor was it propelled by the wind, and it had no funnel, nor was it evidently driven by steam. Reading what the report said on the matter, I paused again to consider what I should say about it myself. "What do you think about this, Strack?" my supervisor asked. "I think, Mr. Ward, that the energy source of this monster called a ship must be as powerful as the energy source of that incredible car that astounds us all." "Strucker, do you really think so?" "Yes, Mr. Ward." Only one conclusion can be drawn.If the mysterious driver really disappears, if he disappears with his strange car in Lake Michigan, it is equally important now to unravel the secret of this equally mysterious navigator, and it must be done before he is destined to invest The abyss of the sea was uncovered before. Did the inventor of this strange ship not want the public to know the secret of his strange ship?Is the US government or any other government not willing to pay whatever price he demands? However, it is not without regret that because the inventor of the ghostly car driving on the land disappeared in order not to let the world know his true identity and where he came from, whether the inventor of the ghostly monster on the sea Will his true identity be kept secret for the same reason?Moreover, if the strange car that appeared for the first time still exists, but has disappeared so far, will the strange ship that appeared after it also disappear in the same way after showing its power, leaving no trace at all? trace? What makes this possibility certain is the fact that, twenty-six hours before the report was sent to Washington, there was no longer any evidence of the extraordinary monster anywhere along the New England waters. Rumors of the ship appearing. There are no reports of its occurrence in any other sea area.Of course, the assertion that it won't happen again is doing more harm than good, to say the least. I noticed another interesting and possibly very important point.In fact, Mr. Ward's views coincided with mine as I considered the matter.Just after that marvelous car disappeared, another equally marvelous boat appeared.And their engines, too, display a most frighteningly dangerous dynamic.If both are galloping over the ground at the same time, the same danger endangers people in cars, boats and on foot wherever it goes.Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that the police should intervene in some way to ensure the safety of public transport. That is the question Mr. Ward puts to me, and the responsibility on our shoulders is certainly enormous.How we can accomplish this task, however, is a matter of urgency.We then proceeded to discuss the matter, and just as I was about to leave, Mr. Ward made another suggestion to me. "Do you notice, Strucker," he said, "that there is a certain astonishing resemblance between that strange ship and the strange car?" "Mr. Ward, indeed." "Well, I'm wondering if it's possible that these two monsters are the same thing."