five tons of gold, worth about three million dollars, is not near so hard to move as five tons of coal, for instance, especially when it is put in seventy-five pound bars and there is plenty of tackle handy. it took jackson, joyce, and willoughby only about two hours to dump the lead out of the submarine and replace it with the gold—surely the richest ballast the world ever saw.
meanwhile howard, after stationing dorothy and mother joyce in elevated positions where they could watch for the possible approach of forbes and his men, had set to work to get the submarine into order, oiling the machinery, testing the engines and all the various pumps and motors, and finally starting the gas-engine, which discharged the double duty of driving the boat while on the surface,[218] and of charging the electric accumulators for use below. all this took time, and was not finished until after the last bar of gold had been stored away in place.
then howard called the others around him. “before we start,” he said, “i have something to tell you. until now i have kept it to myself, because i did not want to rouse any false hopes. joyce, did you ever hear of wireless telegraphy?”
joyce scratched his head. “and what’s that, sor?” he demanded.
“telegraphy without the aid of wires. i didn’t suppose any of you here had ever heard of it, else captain forbes would certainly not have shut me in the operating-room of a steamer that had a full outfit in perfect working order. during the time i was confined there i was in constant communication with the naval station at guantanamo. i told them of our plight, and i will venture to say that[219] the papers of the country are ringing with the story of the sargasso sea colony and with our personal adventures. toward the end—just before joyce set me free—i got into communication with your father, dorothy. he was wild with delight to know that you were alive and was about to start to rescue you. in fact, half a dozen vessels are probably now making an effort to break a way through the weed to aid us. if we can get back to the coast and wait, we are tolerably sure to be taken off sooner or later. now, the question is whether we shall wait or not?”
joyce and his wife had listened in dazed silence. “do you mane, sor,” demanded the former, “that you can talk through the air with those quare instruments in that little room?”
“that’s it exactly, joyce. i can, and i did. but let me get back to the point. i could give our friends only a very doubtful approximation of our latitude[220] and longitude, so that it may take them a long time to find us, if they ever do. not hearing further from us, they may conclude that the whole thing is a fake and give up the search. they will certainly have a long and tedious battle with the weed. altogether, if they get anywhere near the right spot in less than a month it will be most surprising. certainly they will not in less than two weeks. now, what can we do during the interval? if we decide to wait for them, we must run down the coast and establish a camp somewhere—as far from the village as we can get. perhaps i can find another wireless outfit and get into communication with guantanamo again. certainly, we can find food and shelter, and all we will have to do will be to wait—supposing that forbes doesn’t find us, which he will move heaven and earth to do when he finds we have his gold and his boat.
“that is one alternative open to us. the other, of course, is to dive under[221] the weed and start for home at once. if we meet one of the searching steamers, all right; if we don’t, we can get to port under our own power. there is a risk about such an attempt, of course, but i don’t think it’s a very great one. now, this is the situation: what shall we do?”
howard paused, and the others looked at each other doubtfully. finally, mr. willoughby cleared his throat. “i confess,” he observed hesitatingly, “that i fear the depths of the sea. i should much prefer to remain on top of it and go home in a steamer. may we not run down this—er—river on the surface and talk it over as we go?”
“surely. that’s good sense. we’ll do it. joyce, suppose you run up on the galleon and take a last look for captain forbes. meanwhile, everybody else get aboard. hurry, joyce!”
joyce hurried. in five minutes he came racing back as fast as his legs would carry him. “the cap’n’s comin’,” he[222] cried. “coming with his whole force. he isn’t three ships away.”
howard smiled grimly. “just too late,” he exclaimed. “on board with you, joyce! quick! off we go!” with the word, he cast loose the last mooring, and the seashark moved slowly away.
as, with gathering headway she rounded the galleon’s high-decked poop, she came in view of a dozen or more armed men, who were rapidly clambering over the wrecks, and who burst into excited babble as they spied the little vessel. an instant later forbes appeared.
“curse you!” he shrieked. “i’ll get you yet.” he threw his rifle to his shoulder and fired, his men following suit with a scattering volley.
but at the first sign of hostilities, howard, who was alone on deck, dropped nimbly down inside the body of the seashark, and remained, steering by aid of the camera lucida put there for the purpose, until a curve in the channel sheltered[223] the little vessel from the bullets that had pattered harmlessly around her.
for an hour the seashark dropped swiftly down the slowly widening channel between ever-changing banks of massed ships. in that hour she passed in review the shipping of more than two centuries. squat-bellied, round-bowed dutchmen, high-pooped spaniards, clippers that had made the american flag famous, frigates shot-torn and shattered in the american civil war, deep-water ships still bearing the indelible imprint of the chinese trade, steamers old and new—one by one they passed in a progression constantly growing more and more modern. howard, alone in the conning-tower, glanced at them with wonder; never before had they so impressed him. until then, nearness had obscured the vastness of the ruin, and only now had the full meaning of it all been hammered into his mind.
but he resolutely threw off the spell, and concentrated his entire attention on[224] the navigation of his little vessel. it was very necessary. the channel, being newly formed, was reasonably clear of weed, but it was impossible to guess how soon its character might change. the smallest patch of vegetation might foul the screw of the seashark, or might conceal a water-logged spar, floating just awash, that would rip a plate from her bow and send her to the bottom, ending at once the lives of the castaways and their dreams of fortune. in some ways it would be safer beneath the water; yet howard knew that every turn of the gas-engines was aiding to store up power in the electric accumulators, on which alone they must depend when the time came to dive. he did not dare to go below an instant sooner than he must.
after an hour the channel opened more rapidly, and the weed began to thicken, showing that the edge of the wreck-pack was near. soon the accumulation grew so thick that it was no longer safe to push[225] through it. howard glanced at the indicators that measured the power accumulated. “enough to run us three and a half hours,” he murmured, “or perhaps four. at eight knots, that means about twenty-five miles of distance. twenty-five miles! humph! i guess it’s safe.”
he brought the boat to a stop, and spoke to those in the semi-darkness below.
“well,” he queried, “have you decided? is it go ahead, or land and wait?”
no one answered, and in the stillness he heard up-channel the far-off chug-chug of a boat rapidly driven. “humph!” he exclaimed, bending down again. “forbes seems to have been well supplied with boats. he’s after us in a steam-launch. that settles the question definitely. we’ve got to dive. if any one wants to take a last look at this marvellous place, now is the time.”
no one spoke.
howard laughed. “what!” he exclaimed. “nobody? joyce, don’t you[226] want to see the last of your old home?”
joyce shook his head. “faith,” he answered, “i’ve seen enough of it to do me for the rest of my life.”
“jackson?”
“new york’s good enough for me.”
“mr. willoughby?”
the missionary looked up. “man! man!” he cried. “how can you think of such things when we are about to plunge into uttermost peril of our lives? rather, let us pray.”
“pray by all means, mr. willoughby. more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, you know. dorothy, don’t you want to look?”
but dorothy, too, shook her head. “no, frank,” she answered. “i never want to see the horrible place again.”
“then down we go. here comes forbes, by the way.”
around a curve, up-channel, appeared a steam-launch, still far off, but rapidly approaching. howard stood up and[227] waved his hand sarcastically; then, with rapid motions, snapped on the manhole cover, cut off the gas-engine, and threw on the electric starting-lever. then, as the little vessel started forward, he turned the diving-rudder downward.
instantly the seashark slid gracefully down beneath the ripples. from her little turret sprang out a sword of white light that pierced the water before her, while within a score of tiny bulbs illumined the darkness. down she went; down, down, till the gage at howard’s hand showed that a depth of fifty feet had been attained; then slowly he shifted the diving rudders until the boat held steadily to her depth, the rudders just balancing her tendency to rise to the surface. “all set,” he called down cheerily, but without moving his gaze from the front. “nothing to do now but go ahead. make yourselves comfortable. we won’t come to the surface for three hours, and perhaps longer.”
[228]no one answered. the experience, utterly new to them all, was sufficiently terrifying to destroy the desire for conversation. shut up in this tiny shell which might any moment prove their tomb, fifty feet below the surface of the ocean, driving forward blindly into the unknown, it would have taken one braver—or more callous—than any there to make merry. howard, used as he was to submarine work, might have cheered them up, had he not been compelled to give all his attention to driving the vessel.
for the dangers, though not what the rest vaguely conceived, were by no means imaginary. let the seashark rise a few feet above the level at which she ran, and she might easily smash herself against a more than ordinarily deeply sunken wreck. let her plunge too deeply, and the increased pressure of the water might force its way in at some weak spot, and crush her like an egg-shell.[229] let her power give out too soon, at a spot where she could not come to the surface to run her gas-engine, and so replenish her accumulators, and they would all perish miserably. on howard rested all the responsibility, and he had no time to give to anything else.
