The New World - Prologue and Ch. 1 -- *Mike*

Prologue:

Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492 while en route to India. Instead he discovered a strange new land that was deemed the New World. The New World wasn't really colonized until the pilgrims came in the latter decade of the seventeenth century. In the following couple of centuries the world was effectively mapped and charted, everything was known, the only mysteries being deep beneath the sea and far into outer space. But one may ask the question, has everything really been discovered? What if an entire continent still lay undiscovered by modern civilization in this, the first portion of the twenty first century, somehow hidden from satellites and all normally effective means of tracking and monitoring, until one day, 3,000 passengers aboard a luxury cruise ship stumbled into a terrible storm and sunk, leaving one survivor who spots land ahead, where everything else has determined there should be no land?

Chapter One:

The cruise ship Excalibur moved through calm waters in the south Pacific just past Australia at ten knots. It was bound for Antarctica The behemoth of a cruise ship was seven stories tall and nearly two football fields long. Its huge engines chugged and its horn blared. Approximately 3,000 passengers were on that fateful day. It was just past noon. A slight breeze came from the southwest. The temperature was just under 80 degrees fahrenheit. There was not a single cloud in the azure sky. Land was still thousands of miles away.

People talked happily and drank champaigne and wine. They ate and played games, swam in the ship's two pools, relaxed in its three spas, or bathed in the sun on the deck. Movies were playing, concerts were going on, exceptional food was being served, anything that one could entertain themselves with on a modern cruise ship was there to enjoy.

Suddenly the fun came to an abrupt stop. Out of nowhere, the temperature plummeted to fifty degrees fahrenheit and the sky turned black. The wind picked up to hurricane speeds and the cruise ship was relentlessly and repeatedly pummeled with double and tripple story waves. Even the huge powerful ship was tilting and reeling from the waves, and starting to lose its struggle against the waves. Soon the temperature plummeted even more, until it was just over forty degrees. Forty and fifty foot waves were now hitting it, and safety rafts were being lowered into the fierce and angry pacific. Soon the ship capsized ans sunk. There was only one survivor who made it into one of the safety rafts, everyone else drowned in the frigid waters.

John Patrick was the only survivor. He was an average sized man, about 5 foot 7 or 5 foot 8, he couldn't remember which, about 160 pounds, with sandy brown hair and eyes the color of the ocean. Soon after he made it into the safety raft the terrible weather miraculously cleared, yet he was now in fog so thick he couldn't see his own hands. The temperature was about 48 degrees and he was soaked to the bone. The wind was still coming in at over 20 miles an hour and driving frigid sprays of water over him. He didn't know where he was going and it seemed to him that he was a million miles from home. For all he knew this was his last day alive.

Miraculously the fog soon started to clear and they could literally feel the temperature start to rise. Pretty soon it settled in at 70 degrees. Land could now be seen in the distance. Although he couldn't tell how far away it was, he knew it wasn't Antarctica, this land couldn't be more than fifty miles away. Antarctica was still more than three thousand miles away. Not only that, even at this distance, the land appeared to be thick with trees, whatever they were, they sure were big!

To Be Continued...

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