"All right. Go ahead."
Catin, with that rare fortune which sometimes favors the wicked, had chosen precisely the right moment for his ruse. The crew of the submarine were all on deck save those in the engine room, and his quick passage to the vitals of the vessel was unseen.
Once in the pump room, he hastily drew from under his coat the bomb placed in his hands at the conference of diplomats, wound its clock-work spring and laid it beside the pumps.
There was a strange look on the man's face as he did this—a look at once proud and pitiful. Catin had not sense of treachery or shame. The deed in itself did not lack the dignity of courage, for, with the others, he was planned his own death. And while the others were to die suddenly, ignorant of their peril, Catin was to die in deliberate knowledge of it.
On deck Pauline was eagerly questioning an under officer about the torpedoes, when Summers came up.
"You'll have to come down and see for yourself," he said, overhearing her.
"First I'll show you the pump room—the most important part of us," he was saying as Catin, in the boat's bottom, first caught the sound of nearing voices.
Catin leaped up the steps from the pump room. He was in the nick of time. A large locker in the main compartment gave him refuge just as Pauline and Summers reached the room.
"The pumps are our life-savers," said Summers, as he directed Pauline down the second ladder. "If they go wrong when we're under water we can't come up."
"And what do you do then?" asked Pauline innocently.