CHAPTER XXIII.
THE GRIM VISAGE OF DANGER.
Lieutenant Parry sprang toward the speaking tube connecting with the engine room. Already they could feel the tremor as the submarine was violently backed from whatever it was she had struck.
“Stand by your wheel,” he flung at old Tom, as he jumped.
“Aye, aye, sir,” was the steady reply. The weather-beaten old mariner’s face might have been a mask carved out of mahogany for all the emotion it displayed.
“Below at the engines!” bawled Lieutenant Parry down the tube.
“Here, sir,” came up the steady rejoinder from Bowler, and the officer rejoiced to note that his voice did not tremble or falter.
“Have we struck something, sir?”
“Yes. Stand by for signals,” snapped the officer, dropping the tube.
It was typical of the spirit of the Navy, that after the first shock of amazement at the utterly unexpected, not a man on board who wore the uniform betrayed any signs of excitement. The officers gave quick commands. The men obeyed them without a word. But the two bound Italians poured out a flood of lamentations and cries.
“Go below and shut those fellows up!” ordered Captain McGill sharply.
“Aye, aye, sir,” responded Herc, with alacrity, dropping below.
Going up to Guiseppi, the red-headed lad flourished his fist under his nose.
“Do you want this to collide with your yellow features?” he demanded.
“No, no, signor,” wailed the wretch; “but what has happened? Are we going to drown? Oh, Santa Maria! tell us, for the mercy of heaven!”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, except that if you don’t shut up you’ll get busted on the nose,” grunted Herc; “you’ll spend a few years in jail, anyhow, so I don’t see what it matters to you.”
His threats proved effectual, coupled with his fierce looks, and the panic-stricken cowards subsided into whimperings and whinings like the lamentations of whipped curs. This duty attended to, Herc sprang up the ladder again, alert for orders.
“It’s a derelict, sir,” Ned was saying, as the Dreadnought Boy regained the conning-tower. “I can make out her masts and the outline of her hull.”
“That’s right,” approved Captain McGill; “you have sharp eyes, my lad. It is a derelict.”
“The question is, how badly are we damaged?” put in one of the naval officers. He spoke in quiet, level tones, though there was not a man in that conning-tower who did not realize that if any plates were badly sprung they were in deadly peril. The Lockyer was at least thirty miles off shore, and submarines carry no boats!
“Better make an investigation, sir,” suggested Lieutenant Parry.
“By all means, Mr. Parry. Send forward to ascertain if any of the forward plates are sprung.”
“Hum,” exclaimed the officer to himself; “if they are, down we go to the bottom.”
“Here, Strong,” he went on aloud, “you and Taylor take a lantern. Make thorough examination of the peak. If you find anything wrong, report at once.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” cried the boys, and together they vanished.
Procuring a lantern from the engine room, they hastened forward on their errand.
“Is she badly damaged?” asked Bowler, as they left his domain.
“Don’t know yet, old man,” flung back Ned; “we’re going to see.”
“Well, if she is we’re on the job,” snapped Bowler, a determined look settling over his face. It would have gone hard with one of his crew who showed a sign of flinching in that dread moment, but his assistants were going about their tasks, oiling and feeling bearings, without a sign but their intense pallor to show the strain under which they were laboring.
“Good thing we don’t carry a crew of them fellows,” muttered Bowler, as he glanced disgustedly at the whining, terrified Italians, bound fast to their stanchions in the cabin.
Through the forward bulkhead the boys hastened. They found the torpedo room in darkness. This looked bad, for the incandescents in there were supposed to be kept burning constantly.
“Guess a wire has snapped,” surmised Ned; “that shows that we bumped that old derelict good and hard.”
The walls of the place were beaded with moisture, condensed from the warmth within the hull and the chill of the waters without, but there was no sign of a leak. The floor was removable for such emergencies, and the lads soon had it torn up. Hither and thither Ned waved his lantern over the plates, but seemingly, they were all tight. All at once, Herc gave a startled cry. He pointed to a place where a tiny stream of water could be seen making its way through.
“So far as I can see, that’s the only leak,” said Ned; “the pumps can easily take care of that.”
Further examination confirmed this diagnosis. That tiny leak was all the damage the submarine had sustained.
Ned hastened to the conning-tower and so reported. Immense relief was visible on the countenances of all as he told of the results of his investigation.
“Well, a miss is as good as a mile,” said Captain McGill cheerily; “and we won’t go to Davy Jones this cruise.”
“I assume your pumps can take care of the leak, Mr. Lockyer?” asked one of the board.
“Yes, indeed,” said the inventor; “the boat is so constructed that all leakage is drained to a central well. I’ll pass word to the engine room to have the centrifugal pump set to work at once.”
“Possibly we can caulk the leak temporarily,” suggested Lieutenant Parry; “at any rate, there’s no harm in trying.”
“Right you are, Parry,” assented Captain McGill; “you and Mr. Lockyer go below. Make a thorough examination, and act according to your judgment.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” rejoined the young officer, saluting, and darting off on his errand, followed by Mr. Lockyer.
The submarine had been stopped by this time, and she now lay tossing on the surface of the waters, her engines silent and motionless, except for the hum of the dynamos. This latter sound suggested an idea to Captain McGill.
“Strong, do you understand the management of this craft’s searchlight?” he inquired, turning to Ned.
“Yes, sir,” rejoined Ned; “we learned how to work it as part of our duty before the Lockyer was launched.”
“Then let’s have some light on this obscure subject,” said the officer. “I’m anxious to see what it was that came so near to sending us to the bottom.”
Ned reached up and loosened an attachment at the top of the conning-tower. Instantly, raised by strong springs, the searchlight, which differed in pattern from the ordinary kind, sprang out above the lookout place.
Then the Dreadnought Boy pressed a button. There was a sharp click and a dazzling, white pencil of radiance swept the dark ocean on which the Lockyer was rolling. Peering through the lenses, and shading his eyes with one hand while he worked a small wheel with the other, Ned swept the ray about till it suddenly fell on an object about two hundred yards away from them.
“There, sir, there she is,” he exclaimed.
The officers peered through the glass ports of the conning-tower. They saw the brilliantly illuminated outlines of a large, water-logged craft, almost level with the water. From her decks three forlorn stumps of masts stood up as if in mute appeal. She was as sorry a looking derelict as one would wish to see. The winds and the waves had had their way with her and left only this battered hulk to drift about the ocean—a menace to navigation of the most dangerous kind.
“How long has she been adrift, Barnes, do you think?” asked Captain McGill, turning to an officer who stood beside him.
“Hard to say,” rejoined the other; “perhaps for years. We collided with a junk once off the Pacific Coast. It had drifted clear across from China, and from papers found on her, it must have taken her fifteen years to do it.”
“I guess we have all had our experience with derelicts,” was the rejoinder; “they are the most dangerous things a seaman has to encounter.”
“Especially when they are awash, like this hulk,” was Captain Barnes’s reply.
Lieutenant Parry and Mr. Lockyer returned at this point to report that an attempt would be made to caulk the leak temporarily till permanent repairs could be made. For the present, the pump would take care of the leakage.
The derelict, irradiated by the bright rays of the searchlight, was pointed out to the two investigators. They regarded it with interest, not unmixed with graver feelings. A little harder bump against those water-logged sides and what tragedy of the ocean might not have resulted?
“Confound you!” exclaimed Mr. Lockyer impulsively, shaking his fist at the sinister object, as it heaved and rolled in a heavy, sodden way. “You came near to putting us out of commission. I’d like to send you to the bottom, where you belong.”
“Come, Lockyer,” laughed Captain McGill; “instead of feeling revengeful, you ought to offer a vote of thanks. This derelict has not only shown to us that your boat is as staunch and tough as she is swift and handy, but she is going to give us another opportunity we were wishing for.”
“What is that, sir?” asked Lockyer, though he half-guessed the other’s meaning.
“Why,” responded the naval officer, “fate or luck, or whatever you like to call it, has thrown this derelict in our path. She is a serious menace to navigation. A less fortunate ship might strike her and be sent to the bottom. By the time a regular derelict destroyer could be notified, she might have drifted off out of ken. Now, however, we have a chance to rid the ocean of her forever.”
“You mean——,” began Mr. Lockyer.
“That you carry torpedoes, Lockyer, and we were wishing an opportunity to test them. Here is a chance ready to our hands. What do you think of it?”
“That it would be a magnificent revenge, sir,” was the prompt rejoinder.
A chorus of laughter and approval went up from the other officers. After a hasty consultation, it was agreed to gauge the distance and depth of the derelict, and then, withdrawing to a distance of four hundred yards, launch one of the Lockyer’s deadly implements at her. The boys’ eyes fairly shone with excitement, as they heard this. Torpedo work was very much to their liking.
“Mr. Parry, you will take Boatswain’s Mates Strong and Taylor, and Bos’un Marlin, and attend to the torpedo launching. Mr. Stark, you will take the wheel. I will give you the signal when to fire, Mr. Parry.”
Captain McGill gave a nod to show that his orders had been issued.
As Lieutenant Parry, the boys and old Tom vanished, he gave a sharp order.
“Astern, Mr. Stark.”
The submarine began to glide backward once more.
“Stop her. Now, Mr. Lockyer, keep the searchlight on her while I get the range.”
With a range-finding instrument the range was soon gauged.
“Now, Mr. Stark, you will drop to a depth of ten feet, if you please. I think that will be about her draught?” asked Captain McGill, turning to the other officers. They nodded. In backing from the derelict, a careful line had been kept, so that as she dropped, her nose was trained directly amidships on the peril of the seas. Before the submersion began, of course, the searchlight had been drawn in.
“Like the horns of a snail,” was the way one of the onlookers expressed it afterward.
In the meantime, down in the torpedo room, some active work had been going on. By lantern-light, for her electric connections had not yet been repaired, the boys and Tom Marlin, under Lieutenant Parry’s direction, had slid one of the big, heavy, fourteen-foot Whiteheads from its shelf into a sort of conveyor. This carried it to the firing tube, the inner end of which the officer already had swung open.
“Ram home!” he ordered. The great, cigar-shaped projectile, with its tiny, fairy-like propellers and bright metal work gleaming wickedly, was slid into the tube. With a sharp click and snap the water-tight breach of the tube was at once closed. The torpedo was ready for firing.
Before ramming home, however, the “war head” had been placed in the implement. This means that the dummy-head had been removed and one charged with gun-cotton had been substituted for it. Vessels at sea do not carry war heads on their torpedoes. It would be too dangerous. The cap, full of disaster-wreaking explosive, is not put in place till they are to be used.
This done, Lieutenant Parry stood by the inner end of the tube, his hand on a lever. When this was pulled, it would admit compressed air to the tube, which would simultaneously open the outer end of the contrivance and launch the torpedo. At the same time the pressure would keep the water out of the tube. The boys knew that in the Lockyer type of boat, besides the compressed air, the torpedo was helped on its way by a charge of the explosive gas being touched off behind it. This was effected by the compressed air, on its being turned on, operating a small firing point, which sparked and instantly exploded the volatile stuff.
On the top of the torpedo was a small knob. As the torpedo was shot out of the tube, much as a bullet is shot from a rifle, this knob struck another projection on the inside of the tube. This set in motion the compressed-air engines within the torpedo, by which it was driven. At the same time it ignited an alcohol flame which superheated the compressed air, giving it added force.
With all in readiness, they waited breathlessly for the signal to come from above. Lieutenant Parry’s foot tapped nervously, as they stood in silence. His eyes were fixed on a small incandescent bulb, wired directly from the conning-tower. It would flash red when all was ready for him to pull the lever and release the instrument of destruction.
“We’re sinking, sir,” said Ned presently.
The officer merely nodded. The moment was a tense one. There is something to fire the dullest imagination in the idea, that by a mere twist of a wrist, one is presently to launch forth one of man’s most effective engines of devastation.
Only the loud swishing of the water as it rushed into the tanks broke the silence now. All at once, the downward motion—like the falling sensation of a slow elevator, ceased.
Suddenly, above the officer’s head, there was a tiny, crimson flash.
It was the signal he had been waiting for.
Instantly his hand gave a backward jerk.
They could feel a slight jar as the torpedo, loaded with two hundred pounds of explosive, tore from the submarine on her errand of destruction.
Would she hit the mark?