He was about to start to swimming again when the professor began quickly to remove his coat, shoes, and trousers.
“What are you going to do?” cried Bob, wondering if the shock had suddenly sent his scientific friend mad.
“Don’t stop me!” cried Professor Snodgrass. “I’ve just got to get it!”
An instant later he dived overboard, and Bob was about to swim around and catch hold of him, when he saw the little man’s object.
Just ahead of the raft was a mass of floating seaweed, and on it, or entangled in it, were several forms of marine life—a crab, a radiolite and one or two others.
“There’s enough here for a month of study!” cried the professor, as he swam back to the raft with his prize. “Oh, if I only had my microscope and notebook here. But they are back on the transport. Oh, if she should be sunk what a loss it would be!”
“I should say so!” agreed Bob, as he helped steady the raft while the little bald-headed man, holding the mass of weeds he had secured, climbed “on board” again. “Think of the lives that would be lost!”
“Yes, that would be awful,” agreed his companion. “But I would lose a most wonderful collection of specimens and much valuable data concerning them. That rascally Dr. Hallet would get them if he could.”
“Who is he?” asked Bob. “Is he that mysterious individual who was in the guarded cabin? the little man who looks like you from behind, with whom Jerry had the row, and who——”
“Look! Look!” suddenly cried the professor, holding to his bunch of seaweed with one hand and with the other stuffing his removed clothes into a crack of the raft so they would not be washed away. “Look! There’s a boat after us!”