CHAPTER X.
IN DIRE DANGER.
“Cl-a-a-a-ng!”
The signal, twice repeated, crashed out from the bronze gong under the engine room telegraph.
“What’s the order, Jack?”
Tom gazed anxiously at the young chief engineer of the diving boat as he put the question.
“Rise!”
The two boys exchanged glances. This meant that the instant had arrived that was to prove the success or failure of the invention. Once more Jack’s agile fingers busied themselves with levers and wheels.
“You have set the propellers to a rising position?”
“Yes, Tom; a few seconds now will tell the story.”
The White Shark, which had been forging ahead on an even keel almost on the bed of the ocean, continued to proceed in that manner for a short time. Then, as the twin propellers affixed to her sides “bit” into the water, she slowly raised her bow toward the surface.
“Clang! clang!”
The gong resounded again. But this time it was not an order recorded on the face of the signaling dial that it indicated, but a summons to the speaking tube.
Jack sprang toward the bell-shaped mouth of the tube.
“Hullo!” he cried.
“Hullo! Engine room?” came back the query.
“It’s Mr. Dancer,” breathed Jack over his shoulder; and then—“Yes, sir!”
“Congratulations. The White Shark is a success.”
“I knew it, sir; I felt it, that is. We’ve done a wonderful thing.”
“You may well say that, Jack,” came another voice, that of his father; “I’m proud of you, lad. It was your skill that did it.”
“Father, I——” began Jack, when something occurred that placed a check on his further speech.
He had barely time to seize a handhold to keep from being flung off his feet to the metal floor of the engine room.
“What in the world?”
“Great jumping gollyumptions!”
“Shiver my mizzenmast!”
“We’ve struck something!”
The exclamations recorded above came in a volley from Tom, Jupe, Silas, and Jack.
The progress of the diving craft had been suddenly checked. Preceding the startling cessation of motion there had come a grinding, rasping shock that ran through the submarine’s structure from stem to stern. The boys had only time to exchange glances when there came a summons from the signal gong.
“Back up!”
“Oh, if we only knew what had happened!” cried Tom, starting for the door that led, by way of the main cabin, to the fore part of the craft.
In a flash Jack was after him, pausing only to set the lever that was expected to carry out the hastily signaled orders.
“Hold on, Tom!”
The words snapped out like so many pistol shots.
“But, Jack, we may be damaged! Sinking!”
“That makes no difference; your place is here. Stand by that lever.”
The crisp, incisive tones of his chum’s voice brought Tom out of his panic in a jiffy.
“All right, Jack; which one?”
“That one to the port side. I’ll stand by this.”
With throbbing pulses and strained muscles they waited nervously the next order. But none came. The White Shark shook and quivered as her engines reversed with every ounce of power they possessed; but still she did not move.
Then came another order. This time through the speaking tube: “Drop everything and come forward.”
The power was shut off, and, followed by the curious and beseeching glances of Silas and Jupe respectively, the boys made their way through the interior of the hull to the steersman’s section.
They found Mr. Chadwick and Mr. Dancer anxiously peering out through the observation tube.
“What is it? What’s happened?” demanded Jack anxiously.
“Are we in any danger of sinking?” asked Tom.
“No, I think not. But we are in a bad fix,” was Mr. Chadwick’s response; “look out through the observation tube and tell me what you see.”
The two boys pressed forward, taking the places of their elders. The searchlights concealed in the mouth of the tube were turned on at full power. The bright rays pierced the black subwaters of the Atlantic like a gleaming sword of flame. But at first the two lads could see nothing, just emerging as they had from the bright light of the engine room.
But after a while their sight became clearer. Before them, like some scene viewed by vivid moonlight, they saw the depths of the sea. Fish swam to and fro seemingly fascinated, like moths about candles, by the brilliant rays of the searchlights. Looking down they could make out rocks with fantastic fronds of seaweed waving from them.
And then suddenly something else loomed into view—a long, writhy-looking black object right across the bows of the White Shark.
“It’s a serpent! A big sea snake!” cried Tom.
“I only wish it were,” sighed Mr. Dancer, “but it’s worse than that. It’s the anchor cable of some large ship.”
“Can’t we cut through it?” asked Jack.
“No, I fear we are hopelessly tangled in it. When you backed the boat she refused to leave the cable.”
“How did we come to run into it?”
The question came from Tom.
“You may well ask that, my boy, in view of the fact that the searchlights show up the ocean for quite a distance.”
“It was an accident,” struck in Mr. Chadwick, “an unavoidable accident.”
“Yes,” continued Mr. Dancer, “you see, we were coming along at a fine clip when suddenly in front of me I saw an anchor flash downward.”
“Some big craft is at anchor above?” asked Jack.
“There must be. I had no time to avoid this entanglement before the anchor was hard and fast in the ocean bed.”
“We’ve got to get loose,” declared Tom.
“Of course, unless we wish to remain here below till the craft above us up-anchors, which may not be for days or may take place in an hour.”
In rejoinder to Mr. Dancer, Jack’s father said:
“That is too uncertain. By the way, Dancer, how long will the air remain pure in the White Shark?”
“For twenty-four hours. I have an emergency oxygen device which increases that supply by some five hours, but the quality of air would be bad.”
“It does not seem any too good right now,” said Jack, aside to Tom. Then he added:
“How are we caught, sir?” addressing his query to Mr. Dancer.
“I think that a projection on the observation tube has become entangled in the rope.”
“In that case we are in a bad fix?”
“About as bad as it can be,” was the reply; “there’s no way of getting out there and cutting the obstruction loose, even if we had diving dresses, which we haven’t.”
Mr. Dancer looked about him despairingly as he spoke.
“Too bad that such an accident should have marred our first trip,” he said with that placid submission to circumstances which was characteristic of him.
“The only thing to do is to think of some way to release ourselves,” declared Mr. Chadwick energetically.
“Obviously; but what to do, my friend?”
The question was put bluntly and Mr. Chadwick had no reply for it. Tom broke the silence that followed.
“I think I’ve got a scheme,” he said.
They pressed about him eagerly while from the main cabin came a loud wail.
“Golly ter gracious, ah knowed suthin’ lak dis yar ’ud happen. De idea ob dis yar diving’ ’bout lak fishes ain’t right. Now we’s all gone coons.”
“Silence!” roared the voice of Silas Hardtack. “I’ve been on the old Ohio in worse holes than this ‘un, and I’ll bet my bottom dollar we’ll get out of this some way. But if you’ve got to die, ‘cookie,’ die like men did on the old Ohio—without a squeal or whimper.”