Howard ceased speaking, but no one moved. With the failing power, the electric lights had grown perceptibly dimmer, and the voyageurs could barely see each other’s faces. Soon, it was evident, the lights would go out altogether.
“Obviously,” Howard resumed, “we cannot cut the cables from inside the ship. They can only be reached from the outside by some one who will leave the boat.
“Fortunately, this last is not difficult. On the open sea it is even easy. The Seashark is a torpedo boat, fitted to discharge torpedoes under water. Time and again the crew of an injured submarine have escaped—all but one—by getting into the torpedo tube and being fired out by a moderate charge of compressed air. Here in the weed it will be more difficult, of course, but not especially dangerous. So”—the speaker paused and looked around him—“so if one of you will come and touch me off, I’ll see what I can do toward cutting those confounded cables.”
As Howard’s voice died away, the electric lights went suddenly out, and a gasp of sheer horror ran through the tiny cabin. For a moment no one spoke; then Dorothy groped her way through the blackness to Howard’s side.
“Not you! not you, my husband!” she murmured. “Not you. Let me go.”
Howard laughed gently as he caressed the unseen face. “Not likely, dear,” he answered.
The strident voice of the missionary broke through the gloom. “And if you are drowned in the attempt, what will the rest of us do?” he demanded.
“If I fail, another must try. But I won’t fail.”
“Even if that other succeed, what good will it do us? No one but you can run this boat, and we would only exchange death down here for death on the surface. No, Mr. Howard, you must not go. I will go.”
“You.”