"WE BELONG TO THE NAVY, TOO!"
"You mean, sir," asked Midshipman Jetson, his voice hoarse in
spite of his efforts to remain calm, "that we are doomed to remain
here at the bottom of the bay unless divers reach us in time?"
"Yes," nodded Hal Hastings, his voice as quiet and even as ever.
"Unless we can find a duplicate plate---and that appears
impossible---the 'Dodger' is wholly unable to help herself."
"If the outlook is as black as it appears, gentlemen," spoke Jack
Benson from behind their backs, "I'm extremely sorry that such
a disaster should have happened when we had six such promising
young Naval officers aboard."
"Oh, hang us and our loss!" exploded Dave Darrin forgetting that
he was addressing an officer. "I guess the country won't miss
us so very much. But it surely will be a blow to the United States
if the Navy's three best submarine experts have to be lost to
the country to satisfy a discharged enlisted man's spite."
Eph Somers had come down from the tower. He, too, looked extremely
grave, though he showed no demoralizing signs of fear.
As for the six midshipmen, they were brave. Not a doubt but that
every one of them showed all necessary grit in the face of this
fearful disaster. Yet they could not conceal the pallor in their
faces, nor could they hide the fact that their voices shook a
little when they spoke.
"Make a thorough search, Mr. Hastings," directed Lieutenant Jack
Benson, in a tone as even as though he were discussing the weather.
"It's barely possible that the duplicate plates have been only
mislaid---that they're in another drawer."
Hal Hastings turned with one of his quiet smiles. He knew that
the system in his beloved engine room was so exact that nothing
there was ever misplaced.
"I'm looking, sir," Hastings answered, as he opened other drawers
in turn, and explored them. "But I'm not at all hopeful of finding
the duplicate plates. This damaged one had been filed thinner,
which shows that it was done by design. The man who would do
that trick purposely wouldn't leave any duplicate plates behind."
The four enlisted men and the cook had gathered behind their officers.
"Morton---the hound! This is his trick!" growled Seaman Kellogg
hoarsely. "Many a time I've heard him brag that he'd get even
for the punishments that were put upon him. And now he has gone
and done it---the worse than cur!"
"No; there are no duplicate parts here," announced Ensign Hastings
at last.
"See if you can't fit on the old, worn one," proposed Lieutenant
Jack.
"No such luck!" murmured Hal Hastings. "Morton was too good a
mechanic not to know bow to do his trick! He hasn't left us a
single chance for our lives!"
None the less Hal patiently tried to fit the plate back and make
the motor work, Lieutenant Jack, in the meantime, standing by
the board with the wrench in hand. In the next ten minutes several
efforts were made to start the motor, but all of them failed.
"And all for want of a bit of copper of a certain size, shape
and thickness," sighed Midshipman Dan Dalzell.
"It does seem silly, doesn't it," replied Lieutenant Jack with a
wan smile.
"At least," murmured Midshipman Wolgast, "we shall have a chance
to show that we know how to die like men of the Navy."
"Never say die," warned Ensign Eph Somers seriously, "until you
know you're really dead!"
This caused a laugh, and it eased them all.
"Well," muttered Jetson, "as I know that I can't be of any use
here I'm going back into the cabin and sit down. I can at least
keep quiet and make no fuss about it."
One after another the other midshipmen silently followed Jetson's
example. They sat three on either side of the cabin, once in
a while looking silently into the face of the others.
Not until many minutes more had passed did the three officers of the
"Dodger" cease their efforts to find a duplicate plate for the motor.
Kellogg and another of the seamen, though they met their chance of
death with grit enough, broke loose into mutterings that must have
made the ears of ex-seaman Morton burn, wherever that worthy was.
"I wish I had that scoundrel here, under my heel," raged Seaman
Kellogg.
"It will be wiser and braver, my man," broke in Lieutenant Jack
quietly, "not to waste any needless thought on matters of violence.
It will be better for us all if every man here goes to his death
quietly and with a heart and head free from malice."
"You're right, sir," admitted Kellogg. "And I wish to say, sir,
that I never served under braver officers."
"There won't be divers sent after us---at least, within the time
that we're going to be alive," spoke Midshipman Farley soberly.
"In the first place, Chesapeake Bay is a big place, and no Naval
officer would know where to locate us."
"Mr. Benson," broke in Jetson suddenly, "I heard once that you
submarine experts had invented a way of leaving a submarine boat
by means of the torpedo tube. Why can't you do that now?"
"We could," smiled Lieutenant Jack Benson, "if our compressed
air apparatus were working. We can't do the trick without compressed
air. If we had any of that which we could use, we wouldn't need
to leave the boat and swim to the top. We could take the boat to
the surface instead."
"Then it's impossible, sir, to leave the boat?" questioned Jetson,
his color again fading.
"Yes; if we opened the outer end of the torpedo tube, without
being able to throw compressed air in there first, then the water
would rush in and drown us."
"I'm filled with wonder," Dan Dalzell muttered to himself. "Staring
certain death in the face, I can't understand how it happens that
I'm not going around blubbering and making a frantic jackanapes
of myself. There's not a chance of living more than an hour or
two longer, and yet I'm calm. I wonder how it happens? It isn't
because I don't know what is coming to me. I wonder if the other
fellows feel just as I do?"
Dan glanced curiously around him at the other midshipmen faces.
"Do you know," said Darrin quietly, "I've often wondered how other
men have felt in just such a fix as we're in now."
"Well, how do you feel, Darry?" Farley invited.
"I'm blessed if I really know. Probably in an instant when I fail
briefly to realize all that this means my feeling is that I wouldn't
have missed such an experience for anything."
"You could have all my share of it, if I could make an effective
transfer," laughed Wolgast.
"If we ever do get out of this alive," mused Page aloud, "I don't
doubt we'll look back to this hour with a great throb of interest
and feel glad that we've had one throb that most men don't get in
a lifetime."
"But we won't get out," advanced Jetson. "We're up hard against
it. It's all over but the slow strangling to death as the air
becomes more rare."
"I wonder if it will be a strangling and choking," spoke Darrin
again in a strange voice; "or whether it will be more like an
asphyxiation? In the latter case we may drop over, one at a time,
without pain, and all of us be finished within two or three minutes
from the time the first one starts."
"Pleasant!" uttered Wolgast grimly. "Let's start something---a
jolly song, for instance."
"Want to die more quickly?" asked Dalzell. "Singing eats up the
air faster."
Lieutenant Jack Benson came out of the engine room for a moment.
He took down the wrench and went back to the engine room. But
first he paused, for a brief instant, shooting at the midshipmen
a look that was full of pity for them. For himself, Jack Benson
appeared to have no especial feeling. Then the young commanding
officer went back into the engine room, closing the door after him.
"What did he shut the door for?" asked Jetson.
"Probably they're going to do something, in there, that will call
for a good deal of physical exertion."
"Well, what of that?" demanded Jetson, not seeing the point.
"Why," Dave explained, "a man at laborious physical work uses up
more air than a man who is keeping quiet. If the three officers
are going to work hard in there then they've closed the door in
order not to deprive us of air."
"We called them kids, at first," spoke Dan
Dalzell ruefully, "but they're a mighty fine lot of real men, those
three acting Naval officers."
Dave Darrin rose and walked over to the engine room, opening the
door and looking in. Hal and Eph were hard at work over the motor,
while Lieutenant Jack Benson, with his hand in his pockets, stood
watching their efforts.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Darrin, saluting, "but did you close
this door in order to leave more air to us?"
"Yes," answered Jack Benson. "Go back and sit down."
"I hope you won't think us mutinous, sir," Darrin returned steadily,
"but we don't want any more than our share of whatever air is left
on board this craft. We belong to the Navy, too."
From the after end of the cabin came an approving grunt. It was
here that the cook and the four seamen had gathered.
With the door open the midshipmen could see what was going on
forward, and they watched with intense fascination.
Eph Somers had taken 'the too-thin copper' plate to the work-bench,
and had worked hard over it, trying to devise some way of making
it fit so that it would perform its function in the motor. Now,
he and Hal Hastings struggled and contrived with it. Every time
that the pair of submarine boys thought they had the motor possibly
ready to run Hal tried to start the motor. Yet he just as often
failed to get a single movement from the mechanism.
"I reckon you might about as well give it up," remarked Lieutenant
Jack Benson coolly.
"What's the use of giving up," Eph demanded, "as long as there's
any life left in us?"
"I mean," the young lieutenant explained, "that you'd better give
up this particular attempt and make a try at something else."
"All right, if you see anything else that we can do," proposed
Eph dryly. "Say, here's a quarter to pay for your idea."
Seemingly as full of mischief as ever, Eph Somers pressed a silver
coin into Jack Benson's hand.
But Jack, plainly impatient with such trifling, frowned slightly
as he turned and pitched the quarter forward.
"This isn't a twenty-five-cent proposition," Benson remarked.
"In fact, all the money on earth won't save us this time!"