Then my eye fell on the broken panel. I entered it and groped cautiously down the passageway. At the end I gazed about, trying to discover which way they had all gone.
At last, down on the shore, before a wharf I could see Woodward, the strange old hermit and the rest.
I ran toward them, calling.
. . . . . . .
By this time the soldier who had been sent for the submarine telescope arrived at last, with the telescope in sections in several long cases.
"Good!" exclaimed the old hermit, almost seizing the package which the soldier handed him.
He unwrapped it and joined the various sections together. It was, as I have said, a submarine telescope, but after a design entirely new, differing from the ordinary submarine telescope. It had an arm bent at right angles, with prismatic mirrors so that it was not only possible to see the bottom of the sea but by an adjustment also to see at right angles, or, as it were, around a corner.
It was while he was joining this contrivance together that I came up from the end of the secret passage down to the wharf.
"Why, here's Jameson," greeted Woodward. "I'm glad you're so much better."
"Where's Elaine?" I interrupted breathlessly.