Boy Scouts in a Submarine Part 14

Had the gold already been removed?

It seemed to Ned that the first thing for him to do was to locate the submarine. For all he knew, prowlers from her might be nosing around the Sea Lion.

He had left the door to the water chamber open, of course, and so it must remain until he returned. Jimmie, owing to a defect afterwards corrected, could not expel the water while the door was open, nor could he close the door from the interior.

Fearful that some mischief was on foot, he grasped Jack by the arm and hastened back to where Frank had been left. His first care should be to find the exact location of the hostile submarine and then see that no air-hose reached from her to the Sea Lion.

The three boys pa.s.sed out of the wreck and came to the stern of the once fine s.h.i.+p. She had gone down prow first, and the stern was a little above the level sand floor of the sea.

Instead of pa.s.sing around the stern and coming out on the other side, the boys halted and crouched down, so as to see under the keel. As the outer sh.e.l.l of the s.h.i.+p was here at least a yard above the bottom, it was plain that the cargo had swept forward when she went down, thus holding her by the nose.

There was no longer any doubt as to what was going on. There, only a few yards away, lay the dark bulk of a submarine. Only for a light glimmering through the closed door of the water chamber it could not have been seen at all.

The men who were working in the wreck had taken no chances in leaving the boat. Their lines and air-hose pa.s.sed through the outer door in well-guarded openings, and the interior was as safe from intrusion as a walled-in fortress.

Ned regretted that he had not observed the same precaution in leaving the Sea Lion, still he did not believe that his boat had been attacked. After a few moments devoted to observation, Ned crept around the keel and looked down the side of the s.h.i.+p which lay toward the submarine. Men with electric lamps in their helmets were working there.

They appeared to be forcing an entrance into the lower hold of the s.h.i.+p through a small break in the sh.e.l.l. This led him to the conclusion that the way to the very bottom was blocked from the inside, and that the gold--if it had been stored there--had not yet been removed.

He returned to his chums and all three started back to the Sea Lion.

The men about the wreck were all so busy that it did not seem to Ned that they knew of the presence there of his submarine.

Still, he searched the bottom, as he pa.s.sed along, with both hands and feet for any line which, leaving the stranger, might be leading to her rival. Finally he discovered, much to his annoyance, a hauling line and an air-hose leading in the direction he was going.

"I'm afraid," he thought, "that Jimmie is in trouble."

CHAPTER IX

"JIMMIE'S FOOLISH--LIKE A FOX"

Left alone in the Sea Lion, Jimmie spent most of his time watching from a darkened window. He could distinguish little in the faint sifting of moonlight which dropped down from the sparkling surface of the sea, but there was companions.h.i.+p even in that.

He had been instructed by Ned to keep the interior dark, and so he watched the ocean floor for the lights which his chums might be obliged to turn on. As the reader knows, however, the exploring party showed no lights at all until the interior of the wreck had been gained.

Listening and waiting, half inclined to admit that he was just a little bit lonesome, the boy stood at his post for about a quarter of an hour. Then he saw an opaque object moving toward the submarine.

It was not a shark or other monster of the sea, for it walked upright and seemed to move up and down as it came to the little undulations in the ocean floor. When it came nearer Jimmie moved toward the door of the water chamber.

"That must be Ned," he thought, "comin' back alone. Now, I wonder if anythin' has happened to Frank an' Jack?"

For a moment the heart of the lad throbbed wildly, then he calmed himself with the thought that in case of accident he would have been notified by the lifting lines. The air machine was working perfectly, too, and this indicated that all was well below.

Finally the moving object came to a position about ten yards distant from the submarine and stopped. He was now about fifty feet below the window out of which Jimmie looked, for the Sea Lion, as has been said, lay well up from the bottom, not exactly over the wreck but not far from it.

In a moment the boy saw the glimmer of a lamp down where the man was, and saw that it was moving about on the bottom. Lights, of course, do not show in water as they do in air, and so it was only a faint illumination that Jimmie observed.

Still, he could see that whoever was carrying the light was fumbling about on the bottom. He watched intently for a moment and then saw the man coming toward him, swimming straight up.

"I guess it's one of the boys," Jimmie mused. "He must have lost his line, and when I saw him fumbling he must have been removing the weights designed to hold him down in spite of the air in the helmet."

This appeared to be a good explanation, and the boy stood with his face pressed against the gla.s.s panel of the water chamber door, waiting for whoever it was to enter, close the apartment, and push the lever that controlled the exhaust which emptied the chamber.

At last the swimmer clambered into the chamber, and the waiting boy was about to switch on a light when a suspicious action on the part of the other caused him to hesitate. He could observe the actions of the man in the water on the other side of the gla.s.s panel quite clearly now, and was alarmed at what he saw him doing.

Instead of drawing his air-hose in with him and coiling it carefully so as to clear the doorway and still leave free pa.s.sage for the air which was being pumped into it, he laid the hose carefully in a slide-covered groove in the edge of the door. The hose did not seem to be quite large enough to fill the groove, and the fellow took something soft and pliable from a pocket and wrapped around it.

Then he closed the door and pushed the lever which released the power that forced the water out of the chamber. Only one inference was to be drawn from the scene which Jimmie had witnessed.

The man in the water chamber was a stranger. This was merely an attempt to get possession of the Sea Lion.

The fellow was breathing air pumped into his hose by some other boat than the Sea Lion. He had cast off his weights in order to gain the chamber, which neither one of the boys would have found necessary, as they would have been carried up by the machinery which worked the lifting and descending lines.

Another thing the boy realized, as he waited with anxiety for the next move. The man, whoever he was, was thoroughly familiar with the plan of the Sea Lion.

The grooves in the edge of the door had been planned so as to give entrance to visitors who were not receiving their air from the Sea Lion. No one was believed to know anything about this arrangement--no one save the builders and the Secret Service men.

While Jimmie watched, the intruder moved the lever and the water in the chamber began to lower. When the water was forced out fresh air was automatically forced in.

Before long the intruder disconnected his hose with his helmet and threw the end over a hook provided for that purpose. When the water was all out he knocked heavily on the door leading to the room where Jimmie stood.

"There'll be doings here directly," the boy thought.

Again and again the visitor beat upon the door, but Jimmie gave no sign. He could not well observe the man now, for, with the water out of the chamber, the light carried by the man inside shone brightly against the gla.s.s panel, and the boy would have been observed had he stood close to it.

Jimmie grew more anxious as the seconds pa.s.sed. He was trying to put away the thought that the intruder had cut the air-hose attached to the helmets of his friends.

For all he knew all three boys might be lying drowned, on the floor of the ocean. The thought was unbearable, and he resolved to banish it in action.

His first impulse was to disconnect the exhaust and fill the chamber with water. The man in there had disconnected his air-hose and would soon drown.

But the brutality of such a course soon presented itself, and Jimmie cast about for some other method of meeting the dangerous situation.

He could hear the visitor fumbling at the door, and wondered if he knew the secret of opening it.

After a time it seemed to the listening boy that the fellow was feeling in the right locality for the hidden spring which would open the door from the other side, and sprang for the bar which secured it against such entrance. Then he dropped the bar and stood wiping the sweat from his forehead.

"If I bar the door," he mused, "that robber will cut the air-hose protecting the boys outside, if he has not already done so. I've just got to let him in here an' take chances."

He hastened to the back of the room and brought a long coil of rope.

Making a running noose in one end, he released several loops from the big coil and held them loosely in his hand.

"I wonder if I can a.s.sist him into our princely apartments?" thought the boy, whimsically. "If I can get this rope around his body and over his arms, I'll be the boss of the precinct! I expect he'll tumble around a good deal, but I guess I can quell him!"

The boy waited in the darkness until a faint click told him that the intruder had discovered the spring. This was followed by a slam as the sliding door fell back.