AN UNEXPECTED FIND
Closing the aquascope of the _Nautilus_ with a quick turn of the
air control, Superintendent Brown stepped lightly across the diving
compartment of the new salvage ship to the side of the fleet captain.
"What's up, Cap?" he inquired casually.
Austin was peering intently straight ahead through the water. The
_Nautilus_ was moving slowly to and fro with the rise and fall of the
tide, but her progress forward through the water had been checked by a
signal to the engine room of the mother ship, the _Jules Verne_.
"Looks like we had accidentally run upon a wreck our first day out."
Captain Austin had his gaze firmly directed upon the outlines of some
object near at hand, the character of which he was not at all able to
make out as yet. Perhaps it was just a shifting sand formation; or
possibly an apparition in the water due to the passage of the sun
behind clouds, or a school of fish in the bay.
Superintendent Brown took up his station at another port just to the
left of the captain. His eyes by now, directed by Brown, rested on the
identical object that had first claimed the attention of the captain.
"Blamed if I don't think you are right, Austin," remarked the
superintendent after a bit.
He suggested that the _Nautilus_ be moved forward slightly in order
that the two might get a more comprehensive view of the "phantom ship"
that had loomed out of the mist like some specter of the deep that
Jules Verne himself had conjured in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
Sea."
Cap Austin fell in with the idea, and at once took down the telephone
connecting with the _Jules Verne_.
"Move us forward until I give you one bell and then stop right on
the trigger," was the order to the engine room of the mother ship.
Instantly the _Nautilus_ was propelled forward through the water. At
the ports stood the two officials straining their eyes intently.
Jay and Dick stood conversing in low tones, while Larry kept up his
inspection of the diving chamber. This was a new experience for him and
he was distinctly not at home.
"Looks like it is a small craft of some kind ... might be a destroyer
... perhaps a fishing boat ... no, it's bigger and of a different
design ... well heeled over to port ... close enough."
Fragments of the conversation between Cap Austin and the yard
superintendent floated back to the ears of the Brighton boys. They were
as interested as their elders in the proceedings. What an extraordinary
thing if on this first trip of the _Jules Verne_ and the _Nautilus_ a
lost ship should be found!
"Don't you think we had better stop now and drift up a bit with the
tide?" the superintendent was asking.
Captain Austin thought it better to go just a little closer. Ten or
fifteen seconds passed when he leaped forward suddenly and rang the
bell for the engines to be stopped immediately. Quietly and with
scarcely a tremor the _Nautilus_ glided to a standstill in the deep.
The locomotion of the craft surely was perfect.
"Navy craft of some kind," ejaculated the superintendent after a brief
pause. During the interim he had been studying the object now close at
hand.
"I can see old battleship gray paint first of all," he added.
A naval craft! For the moment Captain Austin was nonplussed. Surely no
one knew Long Island Sound better than he; and he had no recollection
on the moment of any naval craft having been sunk there for some years.
True, during the war, there had been naval maneuvers of all kinds in
the Sound, particularly of the lighter draught vessels stationed at
various points from the Brooklyn Navy Yard up to Rock Island, Maine.
But none----And then it dawned on his mind: A sub-chaser--the E-70.
Sure enough, such a craft had been accidentally rammed one day by one
of the new Lake submarines just off the ways. Although valiant efforts
had been made to save the craft after she had been rammed, all the work
had been in vain. Down she had gone in many fathoms of water.
"I have it. It's the E-70 that went down last August," exclaimed the
captain as he turned to the superintendent.
"Montey" listened while "Cap" Austin unfolded the whole story of the
disaster that had wiped a ship from the roster of the U. S. Navy.
"Suppose we make sure of our identification then, particularly since we
have been so fortunate as to run upon a derelict our very first trip
out," suggested the superintendent.
Captain Austin agreed that it would be the ideal thing to thoroughly
test out the _Jules Verne_ and the _Nautilus_ with a minute inspection
of the find that fate had so coincidentally thrown in their way.
Accordingly they jockeyed the _Nautilus_ to and fro through the water
until they had found the bow of the submarine chaser. Jay and Dick had
been reminded by their captain to keep their eyes open and take in
every detail of the operation of the new diving craft.
"It will be only a matter of a very few days at the most until you
chaps will be down here as workmen instead of guests, and you might as
well get acquainted with the new boat and learn everything about her
you can," the executive had told them.
Needless to say, they were more than taking it all in; they were
acclimating themselves to the very best of their versatile natures. It
was marvelous how well the craft could be handled. The telephone kept
them constantly in touch with the mother ship. In case they wanted to
stop or start suddenly, it was not necessary to wait for the telephone.
An electric buzzer rung in accordance with a pre-arranged code of
signals told the engineer just what to do.
By now the aquascope, or windowed floor, of the _Nautilus_ was poised
directly over the bow of the lost sub-chaser. By moving the chamber
slightly to the left it was possible to lower away toward the bottom
until the name of the lost craft might be noted from the ports of the
_Nautilus_.
"Drop her down gradually now and I'll keep a sharp lookout," said the
superintendent, at the same time directing Dick to take his position
at the other port and likewise to pay all attention toward finding the
telltale mark of the supposed submarine chaser, E-70, on the starboard
side of the bow.
Jay remained by the side of Captain Austin.
"This is one thing you want to learn well in advance and to keep
constantly in mind," the ship's executive cautioned as he signaled the
_Jules Verne_ to swing the _Nautilus_ lower in the water.
What the captain had in mind was the equalizing of pressures. Every
time the _Nautilus_ was lowered deeper in the water it was necessary
to take a greater air pressure into the big diving chamber before the
aquascope could be raised. The depth always showed on the depth-dial.
Also the amount of air in the chamber was registered by a clock-like
gauge. In a crevice on the steel wall hung a small framed schedule
under glass showing the air pressure necessary to suit varying depths.
As yet the process had not been made automatic. The engineer had to
keep this whole proposition constantly in mind.
"See anything yet, Montey?" the captain asked of the superintendent as
the _Nautilus_ dropped slowly away into the depths.
Nothing by way of identification was yet discernible, even though the
superintendent had turned on the powerful submarine searchlights with
which the _Nautilus_ was equipped, and, with the assistance of Jay, was
sweeping the sides of the derelict.
For several minutes they cast about in the water, when of a sudden Jay
exclaimed eagerly:
"Hold right there."
Instantly Captain Austin checked the movement of the diving outfit.
"There! That looks like E-70 to me," exclaimed Jay. The superintendent
moved over beside him and as Jay withdrew from his port station peered
out through the water.
With the glaring light of the _Nautilus'_ reflectors shining more
dazzlingly at this close range than any extraneous natural light that
filtered through from the sun, Superintendent Brown beheld the crude
yet only partially obliterated legend: "E-70."
"Fine and dandy!" he shouted. "It's proof positive. The craft out there
is none other than the lost U. S. submarine chaser that was rammed last
summer, as Captain Austin has told us. A fine feather in the cap of all
of us. A find the first day out."
The superintendent's enthusiasm was contagious. It spread to Larry
Seymour like wildfire.
"Three cheers for the _Nautilus_ and the _Jules Verne_!" he cried in
his excitement.
Deep down under the water, all unseen by the world, these five
submarine navigators rejoiced over the success of their venture. This,
the first trip of the twin diving craft, had so far proved eminently
satisfactory.
"Boys, we have here the positive proof tangibly before our eyes,"
said Superintendent Brown. "But suppose, in order to convince our
many friends upstairs on the deck of the _Jules Verne_" (he pointed
laughingly up "The Subway" out of the _Nautilus_), "we take something
of the E-70 along with us as a souvenir? What say?"
Everybody nodded assent.
"What will it be?" asked Captain Austin.
"Oh, say a smokestack or one of her boilers," snickered the
superintendent, who had a rare good sense of humor for all occasions.
"Suppose we take the whole blooming sub-chaser with us," shot back
Austin, not to be outdone in the pleasantries.
They resolved to go fishing for a souvenir of the E-70, and accordingly
signaled the _Jules Verne_ to be lifted in the water. So soon as the
_Nautilus_ had been raised level with the sloping deck of the submarine
chaser he flashed again for a stop and then buzzed for a slow movement
ahead. Unerringly the tiny diving chamber was pushed forward directly
over the forward deck of the E-70. Through the aquascope at their feet
the five men in the _Nautilus_ could see the outlines of the lost craft
silhouetted against the background of the sea bottom.
"Now to go down slowly," mused the ship's captain. Gracefully as in an
elevator in the Woolworth Tower the _Nautilus_ was eased down until it
was poised directly over the forward deck of the E-70 to starboard.
"See anything you can get a hold of?" asked Captain Austin as he
brought the _Nautilus_ to a stop not more than five or ten feet from
the submarine chaser.
Everybody in the party, including the superintendent, was down on his
knees peering through the aquascope.
"Sure as a cat has kittens!" yelled Larry Seymour. "Slip me a knockout
if I don't see one of that old busted bird's binnacle lamps still
hanging there. See it!" He was pointing now and directing the others
where to look.
Soon they saw it. And no sooner was it spied than every last one of
them resolved they would stay down here now until they had their
souvenir. Forthwith Captain Austin signaled the _Jules Verne_ again to
be lowered. Three feet was all he wanted.
And then the miracle again. One hundred feet down in the embrace of
the ocean, bottled up in a diving chamber that stood directly over
a shipwreck, suffering not, even though working in a high-pressure
atmosphere, these five men saw the floor beneath them rolled away again
and the water of the deep sea held completely in check,--an unseen hand
of compressed air hurling it back as King Canute would have swept the
ocean back from the strand!
"Get it, Seymour," said Superintendent Brown, pointing to the binnacle
lamp of the E-70. For there it was directly beneath the open aquascope
of the _Nautilus_.
And the debonair young Mr. Seymour, now quite at ease in the diving
chamber that had been both a riddle and a nightmare to him when he came
below for the first time, nonchalantly sat down on the floor of the
_Nautilus_ and thrust his legs out into the sea. With no more effort
than though he were hauling out a huge sea carp, he leaned down and
tore from its rusted fastenings the binnacle lamp of the E-70. Willing
hands reached to assist him lift it into the _Nautilus_; but Larry was
more than equal to the occasion.
"There it is--E-70," exclaimed Superintendent Brown, pointing to
lettering on the side of the lamp, still visible through rust.
"And some souvenir to take to our friends on the _Jules Verne_,"
replied "Cap" Austin as the party made ready to vacate the _Nautilus_.