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Unit 3
TEXT I
Three Sundays in a Week
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Robert, the narrator of the story, was left in the care of his Uncle Rumgudgeon when his parents died. He grew up with Kate, daughter of Uncle Rumgudgeon. Kate had agreed to marry Robert any time he got her father's consent. But the old man would not give his consent until three Sundays came together in a week. Robert was greatly upset.
Now it so happened that among Kate's sailor friends were two men who had just traveled around the globe. They had circled it in a year and come back to England. With their help, Kate and I tried to gain our point indirectly. So we invited the pair up to meet my uncle, and after a half hour or so of idle talk, we began to steer the conversation.
"Well, well, Mr. Rumgudgeon," Captain Pratt started. "Here I am just a year after leaving England — let me see. October 10 — yes, just a year since I called here, you will remember, to bid my friends goodbye. By the way — it does seem a coincidence, really, doesn't it? Captain Smitherton here has also been absent a year exactly — just a year today!"
"Why yes, yes, yes," replied my uncle. "Very queer indeed. Both of you gone just a year — very queer indeed. Now, that's what Dr. Double L. Dee would call an extraordinary concurrence of events. Extraordinary! Doctor Doub —"
"To be sure, papa, it is something strange," Kate interrupted hastily. "But remember that Captain Pratt didn't go by the same route as Captain Smitherton — that makes a difference, you know."
"Well," broke in my uncle. "I don't know any such thing! How should I? It only makes the thing even more extraordinary."
"Why papa, Captain Pratt went around Cape Horn, and Captain Smitherton doubled the Cape of Good Hope."
"Precisely — the one went east and the other went west, you fool! And they both have gone completely around the world. Now, Dr. Double L. Dee —"
"Captain Pratt, you must come and spend the evening with us tomorrow," I said, "— you and Captain Smitherton. You can tell us all about your voyages, and we'll have a game of cards —."
"Cards? My dear fellow, you forget!" cried Captain Pratt. "Tomorrow will be Sunday, you know. Some other evening!"
"Sunday?" Kate demanded. "Come, you know Robert's not so bad as that! Today is Sunday, of course!"
"To be sure! To be sure!" my uncle added.
"I must beg both your pardons," Pratt insisted, "but I can't be so much mistaken. I know tomorrow's Sunday, because —"
Here Smitherton found his voice at last. He'd been looking at the others as though they were mad. "What are you people thinking about, anyhow? Wasn't yesterday Sunday, I should like to know?"
Everyone had an answer for that, but they were different answers. "Today's Sunday!" my uncle roared, purple with anger. "No! No! Tomorrow's Sunday," called Pratt.
"Why, you are all mad, every one of you! I am as positive that yesterday was Sunday as I am that I'm sitting in this chair."
And here Kate ended the quarrel by jumping up, as if she had a new thought. "I see it all! I see it all! It's a judgment on you, papa, about you know what! It's a very simple thing, really. I can explain it in a minute. Here's Captain Smitherton — he says yesterday was Sunday. And so it was. He's right. Bobby and Uncle and I say today is Sunday. And we're right. We're perfectly right. And Captain Pratt is right too, when he says tomorrow is Sunday. — We're all right, because, three Sundays have come together in this week!"
"Why, of course! said Smitherton after a bit of mock thought. "What fools we two are!"
"The earth you know, is about 24,000 miles around. And it spins around from west to east in 24 hours. Now if I sail along eastward a thousand miles from this position, I reach London with an hour extra, because I've been traveling right towards the rising sun and meeting it as it rose. In that way, I gain an hour on the clock. I see the sun rise just an hour before you do. And in another thousand miles eastward, I gain another hour in the same way — by meeting the sun before it rises. Thus when I go eastward around the globe, 24,000 miles or so, and reach this spot again, why, I've gone toward the rising sun just 24 hours. That is to say, when I arrive, it is a full day ahead of your time. Understand?"
"But Dr. Double L. Dee —" my uncle began feebly. Smitherton would not be interrupted.
"But Captain Pratt, on the contrary, traveled westward. Every thousand miles took him an hour away from the rising sun. Each thousand miles in that direction brought him to a point an hour further from the sun. It takes just an hour for the sun to catch up with him there. So we can say that he has lost an hour. When he has sailed 24,000 miles west, why, he has lost just 24 hours. He has arrived a day after our time."
"Now, in that way, yesterday was really Sunday for me, because I gained a day. With you, Mr. Rumgudgeon, who remained here, today is Sunday. Captain Pratt, however, lost a day. Tomorrow will be his Sunday."
"And what is even more interesting, Mr. Rumgudgeon, there can be no particular reason given why the day of any one of us should be more correct than another. We are all perfectly correct in our claims about this Sunday."
Uncle Rumgudgeon kept his word, and Robert would have Kate, her inheritance and all.
By Edgar Allan Poe (abridged and adapted)
TEXT II
The Bermuda Triangle
There is a section of the Western Atlantic, off the southeast coast of the United States, forming what has been termed a triangle, extending from Bermuda in the north to southern Florida, and then east to a point through the Bahamas past Puerto Rico to about 40°west longitude and then back again to Bermuda. This area occupies a disturbing and almost unbelievable place in the world's catalogue of unexplained mysteries. This is usually referred to as the Bermuda Triangle, where more than a hundred planes and ships have literally vanished into thin air, most of them since 1945, and more than a thousand lives have been lost in the past thirty-three years, without a single body or even a piece of wreckage from the vanishing planes or ships having been found. Disappearance continue to occur with apparently increasing frequency, in spite of the fact that the seaways and airways are today more travelled, searches are more thorough, and records are more carefully kept.
Many of the planes concerned have vanished while in normal radio contact with their base or terminal destination until the very moment of their disappearance, while others have radioed the most extraordinary messages, implying that they could not get their instruments to function, that their compasses were spinning, that the sky had turned yellow and hazy (on a clear day), and the ocean (which was calm nearby) "didn't look right" without further clarification of what was wrong.
One group of five planes, a flight of Navy TBM Avengers, on a mission from the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station, on December 5, 1945, were the object, along with the Martin Mariner sent to rescue them, and which also disappeared, of one of the most intensive groundsea rescue operations ever conducted, although no life rafts, oil slicks, or wreckage was ever located. Other aircraft including passenger planes, have vanished while receiving landing instructions, almost as if, as has been mentioned in Naval Board of Inquiry procedures, they had flown through a hole in the sky. Large and small boats have disappeared without leaving wreckage, as if they and their crews had been snatched into another dimension. Large ships, such as the Marine Sulphur Queen, a 425-foot-long freighter, and the U.S.S. Cyclops, 19,000 tons with 309 people aboard, have simply vanished while other ships and boats have been found drifting within the Triangle, sometimes with an animal survivor, such as a dog or canary, who could give no indication of what had happened — although in one case a talking parrot vanished along with the crew.
Unexplained disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle have continued to the present day and no plane or ship is reported overdue and finally classed as "search discontinued" by the Seventh Coast Guard without the expressed or unexpressed comment or feeling among the public or the searchers that there is some connection with the past and present phenomenon of the Bermuda Triangle. There seems to be growing public awareness that something is very wrong with this area. Recent numerous reports from planes and boats which have had incredible experiences within the Triangle and survived are contributing toward a new folklore of the sea, although the cause of the unexplained menace to planes and ships within this area is as mysterious as ever.
From The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berlitz
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