“I heard what I thought was your crowd going through her this morning, but I was afraid of taking a chance, for fear that it might be Svenson and his precious crowd again. So I didn’t call out, though, of course I was tempted to do it. But I was pretty nearly ready to drop out of the hole I had made then, though first I had to figure out some way of preventing the suction from dragging me back. That was something fierce, and I don’t believe any one could have swum out without rigging up the sort of a shield I fixed up before I finally got out. But I managed that, after a while, and then I just got away from her and struck out under water, so that I wouldn’t come up too soon. I hung on to the launch for a few minutes after I picked you up, resting and listening to you.”
So far they had been too excited over Jim’s remarkable escape and the pluck and resource he had shown to remember the reason for it all. But Brady brought them back to that. He knew Jim.
“I suppose you got what you were after, Jim,” he said quietly.
“Great Scott!” cried Jim, “I’d forgotten! I should say I did!”
And he told them of the model shell he had found, with the cunningly hidden metal in the groove above the keel.
“It looks to me,” he said, “as if they’d managed to get at those shells. There’s a magnet coil in each of those motor boats they had.”
“Come and look at our shell,” cried Neilson.
Two minutes served to show that Jim’s suspicions had been correct. The metal was there, under the boat, concealed by the keel.
“I don’t know how they expected to affect one shell and not the other,” said Dick Merriwell, “but I suppose they had some means of doing that worked out. I’m off to Gale’s Ferry to look at our shell. What will you do, Neilson? I think we’ve got time to get old shells rigged for the crew. It may mean a slow race, but it ought to be as good for one as for the other.”
“Just exactly as good,” said Neilson. “There’s nothing else to do. We can get them rigged and ready in time, by hard work. And I guess the race will be just as good—and it will be rowed on its merits, too.”