CHAPTER XI
THE TRY-OUT IN THE DEPTHS
Pollard clutched at the stairway railing with both hands, his face hard-set, his eyes staring.
He was not afraid. In that supreme moment he could not know physical fear. It was the inventor's dread of failure that possessed him.
Jacob Farnum stood as one fascinated as he felt the boat plunging into the depths.
"Aren't you going to put us on an even keel, sir?" Jack called.
The warning was needful. In the exhilaration of that plunge Farnum was in danger of forgetting.
In a twinkling, now, however, he threw open the sea-valves of other tanks, amidships and aft, until the gauge showed that they were running on an even keel and forty feet below the surface. Their speed was now about five miles an hour, but could be increased.
Gradually, the ghastly lines on David Pollard's cheeks began to soften.
His eyes gleamed.
"There's nothing wrong! We can run anywhere!" he shouted.
Yet there was something of hysteria in his voice. Nor was it long before the others began to feel themselves similarly affected.
It was an eerie feeling that all hands had, running along like this, blind and guessing, in the depths. Pollard was the only one aboard who had ever been below before in a submarine boat. Though the rest had faced the chances coolly enough, they now began to feel the strain.
Even when it is broad daylight on the surface, with the sun shining brightly, the submarine boat, when a few fathoms below, is simply a blinded, groping monster. There is no way of illuming the depths of the ocean. Naval officers have suggested the placing of a powerful electric light at the bow of the submarine craft, but, when tried, it has been found quite useless. The light will not project far enough ahead, through the dense water, to do any more than make the surrounding darkness all the more trying to brave men's nerves.
"Take the wheel, Dave; it will steady you to have something to do," spoke the builder to the inventor. "As soon as you get the wheel, turn the course to due south. Follow it to the line."
Jack Benson slid out of the helmsman's seat, giving way to the inventor, and stepped down the stairway.
At the foot he came upon Eph and Hal, standing there, their faces presenting a strange look.
"How do you find it?" asked Benson.
"Startling," replied Hal Hastings.
"Yet nothing is happening to us," contended Eph Somers, somewhat shaky in his tones. "It's just thinking what might happen—if we were to strike a water-logged old hull of some vessel, say."
"Or collide with a blue-fish," suggested Hal, with a short, nervous laugh.
"I suppose we'll be used to this, after a few more trips," laughed Jack, with an effort.
"Are you scared, too?" asked Eph, keenly.
"Well, I can't say I feel wholly comfortable," admitted Jack Benson, candidly.
"Then you're sitting down on your fears pretty well," declared young
Hastings, with an admiring look at his chum.
"We've got to," returned Jack, stoutly. "If we're to go into the submarine boat line we've got to learn to look as though we liked anything under water."
"Let's take a look-in and see how Andrews likes it," proposed Eph.
Peeping through the door of the engine room they beheld the man there sitting bolt-upright on one of the leather-cushioned seats, staring hard at the wall opposite. He turned his head, however, as soon as he became aware of the presence of the submarine boys.
"Rather creepy, ain't it?" hailed Grant, his voice not as steady as usual.
"Think you're going to learn to like it?" demanded Benson.
"Well, I may get so I'll think this sort of thing the greatest going," drawled Andrews, "but I'm afraid a good, soft bed on land will always be a close second for me."
"Wonder how far the bosses are going to run under water?" pondered Eph, sliding into the engine room and seating himself on the cushion opposite Andrews.
"Till they've tried the boat out all they want to under water, I guess," ventured Jack.
"I'll slip back, so I can pass any order that may come," proposed Hal, who, truth to tell, felt an undefinable something that made him too restless to like the idea of sitting down.
As the "Pollard" continued to glide along, almost without perceptible motion at that depth, these members of the crew became somewhat accustomed to the feeling. They began to have a new notion, though, that they would take it all much more easily after they had once seen proof of the new craft's ability to rise.
"Say, I wonder if it would be too fresh of me to ask Mr. Farnum when he means to try the rising stunt?" wondered Eph, aloud.
Grant Andrews looked up with interest, then shook his head.
"Better not," he advised. "We knew what we were coming to, and took all the chances. Now, we'd better keep quiet. Any nervousness might bother Mr. Pollard or Mr. Farnum."
"Well, she's a dandy boat, anyway," declared Eph, a bit jerkily. "So far, she's done everything she's been told to. So I reckon she can rise when the time comes."
"Who's below?" cried Mr. Farnum.
"Hastings, sir," Hal answered.
"Tell the crew we're going to run below the surface until the air becomes noticeably bad. We want to test out the compressed-air devices for purifying the atmosphere."
So Hal stepped forward with the message.
"Don't you think the air begins to smell queer already?" demanded Eph, looking up. "I'm willing to have some compressed air turned on right now."
The others laughed, which was all they could do. Jack Benson, of them all, probably, was getting most rapidly over the first bad touch of "submarine fright." He was now almost as well satisfied as he would have been on the porch of the little hotel at Dunhaven. Only he was anxious to know just how the boat would behave when it became time to rise. That was all.
"How would you feel if we were running along like this, bent on driving a torpedo against the hull of a big battleship?" questioned Eph.
"Curious," Jack answered.
"What about?"
"Wondering if we were going to succeed in the job."
"Put it another way," laughed Grant Andrews, shortly. "How would you feel about being aboard a battleship in wartime, and suspecting that a boat like this was nosing down in the water after you?"
Jack Benson made a little grimace.
"Serious business, this fighting on the ocean, isn't it?" he replied.
"It's stranger to think about than it is to be doing it," replied
Andrews, musingly. "I know. I was in the war with Spain."
"How did you feel?" asked Eph, quickly.
"Tired, most of the time," replied Andrews. "Sick some of the time, and hungry the rest."
"But about being scared?" insisted Eph.
"I was kept too busy, generally, to have any time to give to being scared. I was a soldier, and a soldier is a good deal like any other workman. He does his work by habit, and soon gets over thinking much about it."
There was a long pause, broken by Eph, saying:
"I wonder when they're going to let the boat rise?"
"When they're going to try to make it rise, you mean," corrected Jack
Benson.
"Same thing, I hope," muttered Eph Somers.
After some minutes more Jacob Farnum stepped down below.
"Why, it looks cozy here at night, doesn't it?" he called.
At sound of his voice the boys stepped out of the engine room into the cabin.
"Mighty comfortable sort of place," continued the yard's owner, looking around him. "We'll have to put in some books, won't we, so you young men can read when you're doing nothing under water?"
"Maybe the time will come when we can read," laughed Hal. "Just now, sir, I'm afraid we're too busy with thinking and wondering."
"I'll confess to being a bit nervous myself," responded Mr. Farnum. "Somehow, there's something uncanny about rushing through the depths of the ocean in this fashion, not having any idea what danger you may be close by."
"Such as running into the hull of some big liner that draws more than forty feet of water," hinted Jack.
"We're fifty-eight feet below, now," remarked Mr. Farnum. "You didn't guess that, did you? We sank eighteen feet more, on an even keel."
"Gracious! You meant those eighteen feet, didn't you? It wasn't accident?" gasped Eph.
"We meant it," smiled the builder. "But say, the air is getting a bit foul here, isn't it? We'll have to try the compressed air equipment, now."
By an ingenious mechanical contrivance the present air was forced, by compressed air draught, into compartments from which the bad air was expelled through sea-valves. An instant change for the better in the atmosphere was noted.
"That's another thing about this good old new craft of ours that works all right, so far," remarked the builder. "Boys, I'm beginning to have confidence that we're going to see the surface again all right. Hullo, there's Pollard hailing us."
"The air purified all right, didn't it?" called down the inventor.
"Yes; couldn't have been better," declared the builder heartily.
"Then I'm going to make the supreme test," came down from the man at the wheel. "We'll proceed to find out whether we can rise to the surface and stay there."