Tom Swift and His Undersea Search Part 21

"Bless my silk hat, Tom, of course I'll stay with you!" broke in the eccentric man.

"But you don't share with me," went on the young inventor, looking sternly at the gold-seeker. "What I find is my own!"

"All right--have it that way!" snapped the adventurer. "Set me ash.o.r.e as soon as you can--the sooner the better. I'm sick of the way you do business!"

"Nothing like being honest!" murmured Ned. But, as a matter of fact, he was glad the separation had come. There had been a strain ever since Hardley came aboard. Mr. Damon, too, looked relieved, though a trifle worried. He had considerable at stake, and he stood to lose the money he had invested with Dixwell Hardley.

"This is final," announced Tom. "If we separate we separate for good, and I'm on my own. And I warn you I'll do my best to discover that wreck, and I'll keep what I find."

"Much good may it do you!" sneered the other. "Perhaps two can play that game."

No one paid much attention to his words then, but later they were recalled with significance.

"Get ready to go up!" Tom called the order to the engine room.

"Where are you going to land me?" asked Mr. Hardley. "I have a right to know that?"

"Yes," conceded Tom, "you have. I'll tell you in a moment."

He consulted a chart, made a few calculations and then spoke.

"I shall land you at St. Thomas," answered the young inventor. "I do not wish to bring my submarine to a place that is too public, as too many questions may be asked. From St. Thomas you can easily reach Porto Rico, and from there you can go anywhere you wish."

"Very well," murmured the malcontent. "But I don't consider that I owe you a cent, and I'm not going to pay you."

"I wouldn't take your money," Tom answered. "And don't forget what I said--that what I find is my own."

The other answered nothing. Nor from then on did he hold much conversation with Tom or any others in the party. He kept to himself, and a day later he was landed, at night, at a dock, and if he said "good-bye" or wished Tom and his friends a safe voyage, they did not hear him.

They were steaming along on the surface the next day, and at noon the submarine suddenly halted.

"What's on now, Tom?" asked Ned, as he saw his chum prepare to go up on deck with some of the craft's officers.

"We're going to 'shoot the sun' again," was the answer. "I want to make sure that we were right in our former calculations as to the position of the Pandora. The least error would throw us off."

Using the s.e.xtant and other apparatus, some of which Tom had invented himself, the exact position of the submarine was calculated. As the last figure was set down and compared with their previous location, one of the men who had been doing the computing gave an exclamation.

"What's the matter?" asked Tom.

"Look!" was the answer, and he pointed to the paper. "There's where a mistake was made before. We were at least two miles off our course."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Tom, and, taking the sheet, he went rapidly over the results.

CHAPTER XIX

THE SERPENT WEED

All waited eagerly for Tom Swift to verify the statement of the other mathematician, and the young inventor was not long in doing this, for he had what is commonly known as a "good head for figures."

"Yes, I see the mistake," said Tom. "The wrong logarithm was taken, and of course that threw out all the calculations. I should say we were nearer three miles off our supposed location than two miles."

"Does that mean," asked Mr. Damon, "that we began a search for the wreck of the Pandora three miles from the place Hardley told us she was."

"That's about it," Tom said. "No wonder we couldn't find her."

"What are you going to do?" Ned wanted to know.

"Get to the right spot as soon as possible and begin the search there,"

Tom answered. "You see, before we submerged as nearly as possible at the place where we thought the Pandora might be on the ocean bottom.

From there we began making circles under the sea, enlarging the diameter each circuit.

"That didn't bring us anywhere, as you all know. Now we will start our series of circles with a different point as the center. It will bring us over an entirely different territory of the ocean floor."

"Just a moment," said Ned, as the conference was about to break up. "Is it possible, Tom, that in our first circling that we covered any of the ground which we may cover now? I mean will the new circles we propose making coincide at any place with the previous ones?"

"They won't exactly coincide," answered the young inventor. "You can't make circles coincide unless you use the same center and the same radius each time. But the two series of circles will intersect at certain places."

"I guess intersect is the word I wanted," admitted Ned.

"What's the idea?" Tom wanted to know.

"I'm thinking of Hardley," answered his chum. "He might a.s.sert that we purposely went to the wrong location with him to begin the search, and if we afterward find the wreck and the gold, he may claim a share."

"Not much he won't!" cried Tom.

"Bless my check book, I should say not!" exclaimed Mr. Damon.

"Hardley broke off relations with us of his own volition," said Tom.

"He 'breached the contract,' as the lawyers say. It was his own doing.

"He has put me to considerable expense and trouble, not to say danger.

He was aware of that, and yet he refused to pay his share. He accused me of incompetence. Very well. That presuggested that I must have made an error, and it was on that a.s.sumption that he said I did not know my business. Instead of giving me a chance to correct the error, which he declared I had made, he quit--cold. Now he is ent.i.tled to no further consideration.

"An error was made--there's no question of that. We are going to correct it, and we may find the gold. If we do I shall feel I have a legal and moral right to take all of it I can get. Mr. Hardley, to use a comprehensive, but perhaps not very elegant expression, may go fish for his share."

"That's right!" a.s.serted Mr. Damon.

"I guess you're right, Tom," declared Ned. "There's only one more thing to be considered."

"What's that?" asked the young inventor.

"Why, Hardley himself may find out in some way that we were barking up the wrong tree, so to speak. That is, learn we started at the wrong nautical point. He may get up another expedition to come and search for the gold and--"

"Well, he has that right and privilege," said Tom coolly. "But I don't believe he will. Anyhow, if he does, we have the same chance, and a better one than he has. We're right here, almost on the ground, you might say, or we shall be in half an hour. Then we'll begin our search.

If he beats us to it, that can't be helped, and we'll be as fair to him as he was to us. This treasure, as I understand it, is available to whoever first finds it, now that the real owners, whoever they were, have given it up."