Chap­ter 1 – The Lost Con­ti­nent begins with the Cold­wa­ter slic­ing through the sky on its east­ward course, held aloft by its buoy­an­cy screen. We knew her exact speed, steady and unwa­ver­ing, and it was­n’t long before we saw her sil­hou­ette briefly paint­ed against the last light of the set­ting sun. She van­ished quick­ly beyond the hori­zon, and with her went our imme­di­ate con­nec­tion to safe­ty, leav­ing us only with hope and a des­per­ate need to sig­nal her back.

With no con­ven­tion­al tools at our dis­pos­al, we searched the shore­line for sticks and leaves to build a fire, hop­ing to gen­er­ate enough smoke or flame to catch the atten­tion of our air­borne ship. Though the idea was sim­ple, the act proved dif­fi­cult. The area was scarce in fuel, and time slipped away faster than we could gath­er the nec­es­sary kin­dling. We pressed on, deter­mined to sig­nal the Cold­wa­ter before she van­ished com­plete­ly from range. The sun had dipped below the edge of the world, and our chances grew slim. But aban­don­ing the effort wasn’t an option, not while res­cue was still pos­si­ble.

In our urgency, one of the crew sug­gest­ed a more direct solu­tion: using one of the mor­tars mount­ed on the Cold­wa­ter. The ship, like oth­ers of her kind, had been equipped with auto­mat­ic ord­nance that even a child could fire. All that remained was find­ing a way to access the remain­ing ammu­ni­tion and trig­ger a launch. I recalled how the pow­der mag­a­zines were designed to avoid acci­den­tal det­o­na­tion, placed beneath the water­line and con­struct­ed with fire-resis­tant fas­bestos. Iron­i­cal­ly, it was this very design—once intend­ed for safety—that now posed a bar­ri­er, as the intense fire had forced us off the ship, cut­ting us off from imme­di­ate use of its weapon­ry.

After the fire was extin­guished, the crew ven­tured cau­tious­ly into the low­er decks. We had feared that the heat, com­bined with water ingress, would set off the remain­ing explo­sives. But as fate would have it, the flood­ing had doused the pow­der instead. The flames con­sumed most of the inte­ri­or, yet the sub­merged pow­der mag­a­zines, spared by the tim­ing of the del­uge, remained intact. The deck, now lev­el with the sea, made move­ment treach­er­ous, but our per­sis­tence was reward­ed. A small cache of ammu­ni­tion for the ship’s small-arms had sur­vived.

We worked swift­ly to extract the nec­es­sary rounds and scav­enge for a mor­tar tube, which could be oper­at­ed man­u­al­ly. The Cold­wa­ter was bare­ly afloat, her hull breached in sev­er­al places, and the next wave might be her last. The steel cov­ers of the mag­a­zines had been unhinged in the ear­ly pan­ic, and salt­wa­ter had rushed in, soak­ing every­thing and turn­ing the cor­ri­dors below into sub­merged tombs. It was only a mat­ter of time before she sank entire­ly. The need to act was more urgent than ever.

Amidst the chaos, a strange calm set in. The fire, though dev­as­tat­ing, had not claimed all. That which had near­ly doomed us had iron­i­cal­ly pre­served the very tools we now hoped would save us. This rever­sal of for­tune fueled our deter­mi­na­tion. We fit­ted one of the mor­tars and primed it for dis­charge. With fin­gers crossed and breath held, we aimed sky­ward and fired the round, hop­ing it would arc high enough to be noticed by any­one watch­ing from above.

The sound echoed across the water, a deep boom that shat­tered the still­ness and remind­ed us of our frag­ile place in the vast unknown. Smoke bil­lowed from the mor­tar, drift­ing into the sky as we prayed for a sign that it had been seen. Min­utes passed, stretched into eter­ni­ties by our anx­i­ety. The hori­zon remained unchanged, but hope held firm.

That night, hud­dled on the cold rem­nants of the ship, we watched the stars emerge one by one. No res­cue came, but our resolve did not waver. We were strand­ed, yes, but not defeat­ed. Some­where to the east, the Cold­wa­ter con­tin­ued her course, unaware per­haps of those she left behind. Yet with the mor­tar fired and a sig­nal sent, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of return lin­gered like the last ember in a fad­ing fire.

In this open­ing chap­ter, we con­front the dual­i­ty of nature and technology—the way destruc­tion and sal­va­tion often come hand in hand. The Cold­wa­ter, both our betray­er and our hope, leaves us sus­pend­ed between ruin and res­cue. As we look toward the silent sea, the jour­ney ahead promis­es dan­ger, dis­cov­ery, and the endur­ing test of human spir­it in the face of the for­got­ten world that lies beyond.