“I’ll say they’re some little deserters!” exclaimed Rawlins, “and you’re dead right about another sub, I’ll bet. And say, that helps us some too. They left that schooner and took to the U-boat—that is if they did have a sub at the Caicos. Well, that fits right in with my theory about the latitude and longitude. If they left the schooner there and took the sub you can bet the Caicos are not far from their hang-out. I’ll bet they knew the destroyer wouldn’t touch the smack and expected to lie low and take her again after the boys had cleared out. Why, they might have been lying submerged right alongside of her or with their periscope sticking up watching the destroyer from back of some reef or a bunch of mangroves. Yes, sir—if we hit the Caicos we won’t be far off.”
“H-m-m, there’s a lot of good reasoning there,” agreed Mr. Pauling. “And if we’re to prove the theory the quicker we get started the better.”
“Right you are,” agreed Rawlins. “We’re ready to sail any time. I just want to get a few things together and I’ll be with you. Want to have a look around the studio and shop, boys?”
The boys would gladly have remained for hours or even days in the studio but they realized there was no time to be lost. Here were diving suits of all kinds, sets representing the interior of ships and submarines, the yards and rigging of a bark complete, but with no hull, strange devices at whose use they could only guess and in one corner the enormous intricate octopus of rubber, springs and wire which when occupied by a man, could be made to imitate so perfectly the real creature that scientists who had seen the picture in which it figured had insisted that it was a genuine octopus.
The workshop also was full of interesting things. Here was where Rawlins and his assistants made the diving suits, the under-sea apparatus for taking the films, the lifelike octopus, the miniature ships, the complicated and wonderful counterfeits of the interiors of the submarines and many other objects.
But long before they had half time to examine all these things Rawlins was ready and leading the way along a narrow path through the brush headed for the other end of the island.
“Aren’t you afraid some one will disturb your property?” asked Mr. Henderson, “I shouldn’t think it safe to leave all these things unguarded.”
“I don’t,” replied Rawlins. “I have an old colored chap and his wife who live here. That’s why I kept the submarine out of sight.”
“Where are they now?” asked Mr. Pauling. “Are you sure their curiosity won’t be aroused and that they may not wonder at your sudden appearance and departure and our arrival?”
Rawlins laughed. “They might be curious or talk about a sub—if they saw it, but as far as I’m concerned they are quite sure I’m an obeah man—sort of witch-doctor you know—and absolutely incomprehensible. If I dropped from the sky in a parachute and left in a pillar of flame they’d think it quite in keeping with my habits and no more remarkable than walking into the sea and out again at will. Just at present they’re so busy over some things I brought ’em that they wouldn’t see a sub if it poked its nose into their cabin. And even if they wanted to talk they couldn’t, there’s not a soul living within a dozen miles.”