THE SUPREME TEST.
"Open the side window panel and turn on the searchlight!"
The order came from Mr. Barr five minutes after the _Peacemaker_ struck.
Naturally enough, everyone on board was seriously alarmed; but in the
face of danger the Boy Scouts took their example for action from the
naval officer and the inventor.
Although deadly pale, Mr. Barr kept his voice as cool as an icicle.
Ensign Hargreaves, while fully realizing the danger, yet steeled himself
to calmness; and both Rob and Merritt simulated the courage of their
elders.
Rob hastened to obey Mr. Barr's command. After a few seconds of
manipulation the slide drew back, exposing the large plate glass panel.
To bring the powerful searchlight into play was the work of but a
moment.
As its white rays pierced the gloomy depths of the ocean like a scimitar
of light, all on board peered intently from the panel and strove to make
out what it was that the diving boat had struck.
At first nothing could be seen but the dark water with myriads of fish
swarming about the bright light, which appeared to attract them as moths
are attracted to an arc light.
"Swing the light," ordered Mr. Barr; "bring it to bear a little more
forward."
Rob obeyed, and the ray of light swung in an arc through the obscurity
outside of the _Peacemaker_. All at once, with a sharp exclamation, Rob
stopped it.
"Look! look!" he cried, pointing from the window.
They looked and saw before them what appeared to be a steep acclivity,
ribbed and rocky as a mountain side. It was against this submerged cliff
that the _Peacemaker_ had struck.
"That submarine cliff appears to be of a soft formation," declared the
ensign after a brief scrutiny; "our bow has driven into it."
"Then we are doomed to remain here?" asked Merritt with a bit of a
quiver in his voice.
"Not necessarily. It's up to us now to do all we can to extricate
ourselves."
"But how?"
The question came from Rob, whose voice, try as he would, persisted in
faltering. It was an awful feeling to experience, this of being penned
scores of fathoms beneath the ocean's surface in a diving boat.
"Well, I have a plan in mind. It is a desperate one, but possibly it may
work."
"What do you propose to do?"
This time it was the inventor who propounded the query. Clearly enough
Mr. Barr himself could think of no way out of the quandary.
"I don't care to say just yet," responded the naval officer.
"Why not?"
"Because it is a sort of forlorn hope that I don't care to advocate
until absolute necessity arises."
In the dire extremity into which they were plunged, not one of them
cared just then to waste time by asking questions. Clearly Uncle Sam's
officer was at the head of affairs. In silence they awaited his next
word.
"Rob, you must reverse the engines. Give them all the power they will
stand. It's just possible that we may be able to back out without
injury, although I fear that we are pretty deeply buried in this cliff."
Rob, accompanied by Merritt, hastened to obey. Together the two boys
entered the engine room, and Rob at once operated the mechanism which
caused the _Peacemaker_ to go backward.
As he pulled over the lever and the engines began to whirr and buzz,
everyone on the boat waited breathlessly for the result. But the
_Peacemaker_ did not move. Under the strain of her laboring engines the
steel fabric shook and chattered, but not an inch did the diving boat
budge.
Rob and Merritt exchanged despairing glances.
"Can't you get any more power out of her?" asked Merritt anxiously.
Rob shook his head.
"Not a bit more, old man. She's running at her utmost now."
"Then we're stuck?"
"It looks that way."
"And we're doomed to die right here unless the nose of the boat can be
got out of that cliff!"
"Never say, 'die,' Merritt. We've done the best we can, and remember the
ensign said that he had a plan if all else failed."
"Yes, 'a forlorn hope' he called it."
"In a case like this we can endure anything. Desperate situations
require desperate means to solve them."
As the young Scout leader spoke, Ensign Hargreaves burst into the engine
room.
The engines were still whirring and buzzing, and the hull of the
_Peacemaker_ was quivering under their powerful stress.
"Have you developed every ounce of power they are capable of?" asked the
naval officer.
"Yes, sir," responded Rob respectfully; "they can't do another
revolution."
The officer looked anxious.
"In that case, we shall have to resort to my forlorn hope," he said.
"And what is that, sir?" asked Rob, his heart beating uncomfortably
fast.
"Come forward and you shall see."
The ensign turned and swung out of the engine room, followed closely by
two anxious boys, Rob having waited only to shut off the engines.
In the main cabin Mr. Barr, his face white and strained, sat on one of
the leather divans.
He looked up as the boys and the naval officer entered.
"The engines won't back her out?" he asked in a voice harsh and rough
from anxiety.
"No. I'm sorry, Barr, but we're in a mighty bad fix. This submarine
cliff must be of a sort of blue clay formation that is common off this
coast. We have apparently driven into it so far that nothing short of an
earthquake would dislodge us."
"An earthquake?"
"Yes; such a spasm of nature alone can set us free."
"Then we are doomed to remain here."
"Not of necessity; we have still a chance of escape."
"What do you mean?"
"That my plan offers a mere chance."
"Then let us not delay in putting it into execution."
"But it is a dangerous one!"
"Never mind that. Nothing could be more serious than our present
predicament."
"Very well then, we will try out my idea. It's our last chance."
"Our last chance!" The words sounded to the boys almost like a requiem.
Plainly enough, whatever Ensign Hargreaves' plan might be, there were
dangers attached to it, and no light dangers, either, to judge from his
grave tones. Eagerly they awaited his next words.
"My plan is nothing more nor less than this," he said; "I propose to
create an earthquake."
"To _create_ an earthquake!" Mr. Barr echoed the words, staring at the
ensign as if he thought he had gone suddenly insane.
"Precisely. I intend to produce by artificial means an eruption which
will destroy enough of this cliff to set us free, or else blow the
_Peacemaker_ herself into atoms."
Mr. Barr buried his head in his hands. Skillful inventor and scientific
expert though he was, the last words of the naval officer had sapped
even his iron courage.
"Is there no other way?"
"No other way. It's a gamble for our lives."
"What do you propose doing?" asked Mr. Barr in a strange, broken voice.
"As I said, to create an artificial earthquake."
"I am unable to follow you."
"Then I'll make it clearer. In the torpedo compartment forward you have
six Red Head torpedoes fully charged with gun cotton?"
"Yes."
The inventor was regarding the naval officer with intense interest now,
and the boys also stood transfixed, their eyes riveted on the ensign as
he unfolded his plan.
"What I propose to do," he continued, "is to discharge from the side
torpedo tubes two torpedoes. They will be aimed at the cliff and, of
course, when they strike it, will explode."
"But in that case our bow would be blown off also, and we should perish
almost instantly," declared Mr. Barr.
"Wait a minute. I didn't say we would discharge them _directly_ at the
cliff. What I propose doing is this: We will aim one on each side of the
spot where our bow drove in, taking care to train the tubes so that the
torpedoes will not strike too near."
"Yes, the tubes are movable. That is one of the features of the
_Peacemaker_."
"Very well, then, they will be as easy to train in any desired direction
as a rapid fire gun."
"Exactly. But I never thought when I designed them that I might some day
owe my life to that very feature."
"Well, we are by no means out of the woods yet," responded the ensign
drily.
He led the way to the forward torpedo room. This was right in the bow of
the boat and most of the space was occupied by odd-looking machinery.
Wheels, worm gears and strange-looking levers were everywhere. At the
farthest end of the steel-walled chamber was a sort of derrick
contrivance. This was the piece of machinery used to raise the torpedoes
and swing them into the tubes.
Like the other machinery on the _Peacemaker_, the derrick was operated
by electricity. A pull of a lever and Mr. Barr had set its machinery in
motion. The torpedoes were placed on racks so that it was a simple
matter to secure them to the lifting chain of the derrick. First one and
then another of the polished steel implements of deadly warfare were
raised to the mouths of the torpedo tubes which projected into the
chamber.
Despite their immense weight, the torpedoes were placed within the tubes
with no more difficulty than a sportsman experiences in shoving two
cartridges into the breech of his gun.
In ten minutes from the time the party entered the torpedo chamber, the
steel implements of death had been "rammed home" and the breech of the
tubes clamped and fastened. On the _Peacemaker_ type of submarine
compressed air at an enormous pressure was used to give the torpedoes a
start, although, of course, they contained the usual machinery within
themselves to drive them through the water after they left the tubes.
There followed a moment of suspense as the compressed air, with a
hissing sound, rushed into the tubes.
Mr. Barr, deadly pale but without a tremor in his voice, announced that
all was ready.
The ensign merely nodded and began to operate a worm gear which swung
the tubes at an acuter angle to the body of the submarine vessel.
"I think we are all right now," he said presently.
"Very well," spoke the inventor, his hand on a lever, "when you say the
word, I'll discharge the torpedoes."
"You might as well do it right now," was the response.
The inventor, with hands that shook, swung the lever back.
There was a hissing sound and a slight tremor as the compressed air shot
the torpedoes from the tubes. Less than a second later, simultaneously
it seemed, the submarine was rocked and swayed by a terrific convulsion.
The boys and their elders were thrown right and left with a force that
almost knocked them senseless.
It was but a few moments after the explosion of the two torpedoes that
Ensign Hargreaves uttered a shout that thrilled them all.
"We're rising!" he cried. "My plan succeeded after all!"
"I think that we ought to give thanks to Providence," said Mr. Barr
reverently. "As the ensign has said, the plan succeeded, but it was
taking one chance in a thousand. Had that cliff not been shaken so as to
release us, we might have perished miserably and left our fate a
mystery."
The boys were in the conning tower by the conclusion of Mr. Barr's
words. The barograph showed them to be rising a hundred feet a minute.
No words were exchanged between the two young Scouts, but each grasped
the other's hand in a firm grip and gazed into the other's eyes. There
was no necessity of speech. Both realized that they had passed through
the gravest peril that even they had experienced in all their
adventurous lives.
When the _Peacemaker_ reached the surface once more, the storm had
subsided. With their hearts full of deep gratitude for the miraculous
chance that had saved their lives, her occupants headed the speedy
diving craft back for the island at top speed. The _Peacemaker_ had been
through the supreme test and had not been found lacking.
"I tell you what, Barr," declared Ensign Hargreaves, as they neared the
familiar island, "you have the most wonderful boat on earth, and Uncle
Sam has _got_ to have it. My report goes in to Washington to-morrow and
you can guess what it will contain."
"Thank you," said the inventor simply, extending his hand.