“Pray by all means, Mr. Willoughby. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, you know. Dorothy, don’t you want to look?”
But Dorothy, too, shook her head. “No, Frank,” she answered. “I never want to see the horrible place again.”
“Then down we go. Here comes Forbes, by the way.”
Around a curve, up-channel, appeared a steam-launch, still far off, but rapidly approaching. Howard stood up and waved his hand sarcastically; then, with rapid motions, snapped on the manhole cover, cut off the gas-engine, and threw on the electric starting-lever. Then, as the little vessel started forward, he turned the diving-rudder downward.
Instantly the Seashark slid gracefully down beneath the ripples. From her little turret sprang out a sword of white light that pierced the water before her, while within a score of tiny bulbs illumined the darkness. Down she went; down, down, till the gage at Howard’s hand showed that a depth of fifty feet had been attained; then slowly he shifted the diving rudders until the boat held steadily to her depth, the rudders just balancing her tendency to rise to the surface. “All set,” he called down cheerily, but without moving his gaze from the front. “Nothing to do now but go ahead. Make yourselves comfortable. We won’t come to the surface for three hours, and perhaps longer.”
No one answered. The experience, utterly new to them all, was sufficiently terrifying to destroy the desire for conversation. Shut up in this tiny shell which might any moment prove their tomb, fifty feet below the surface of the ocean, driving forward blindly into the unknown, it would have taken one braver—or more callous—than any there to make merry. Howard, used as he was to submarine work, might have cheered them up, had he not been compelled to give all his attention to driving the vessel.
For the dangers, though not what the rest vaguely conceived, were by no means imaginary. Let the Seashark rise a few feet above the level at which she ran, and she might easily smash herself against a more than ordinarily deeply sunken wreck. Let her plunge too deeply, and the increased pressure of the water might force its way in at some weak spot, and crush her like an egg-shell. Let her power give out too soon, at a spot where she could not come to the surface to run her gas-engine, and so replenish her accumulators, and they would all perish miserably. On Howard rested all the responsibility, and he had no time to give to anything else.
XVIII
One, two, three hours slid by, and, at last, Howard, his eyes fixed on the gage of the accumulators, saw that the power was getting low, and began to watch anxiously for some gleam of light that, striking down through the water, might show a break in the mantle of weed overhead. In vain! Everywhere blackness ruled. Several times he slowed down and turned off the headlight, hoping that, with its effulgence removed, he might see the longed-for gap. After each attempt he went back to driving the Seashark along at her maximum eight miles an hour.
This could not last forever. Rapidly his anxiety grew. The Seashark had been beneath the water for four hours, and his accumulators were nearly bare. To try to break through the weed was dangerous, but not more so than to remain below until all the power was gone. At all risks they must reach the surface.