CHAPTER XIVAn Unexpected Find
CLOSING the aquascope of theNautiluswith 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. TheNautiluswas 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, theJules 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 apparitionin 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 theNautilusbe 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 theJules 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 theNautiluswas 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 theJules Verneand theNautilusa 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 theNautilusglided 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. Duringthe 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 thathad 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 theJules Verneand theNautiluswith a minute inspection of the find that fate had so coincidentally thrown in their way.
Accordingly they jockeyed theNautilusto 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 thecraft 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 theNautiluswas 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 theNautilus.
"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 theJules Verneto swing theNautiluslower in the water.
What the captain had in mind was theequalizing of pressures. Every time theNautiluswas 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 theNautilusdropped 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 theNautiluswas 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 theNautilus'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 theNautilusand theJules 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 theJules Verne" (he pointed laughingly up "The Subway" out of theNautilus), "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 theJules Verneto be lifted in the water. So soon as theNautilushad 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 theNautiluscould 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 theNautiluswas 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 theNautilusto 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 theJules Verneagain 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-pressureatmosphere, 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 theNautilus.
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 theNautilusand 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 theNautilus; 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 theJules Verne," replied "Cap" Austin as the party made ready to vacate theNautilus.