“What’s happened?” he cried; then his eye took in the peril of the situation. The water was fast closing over the Seal, and, despite all his efforts, Garth could not shake her clear of the dying saurian. Once let her touch bottom with that great weight across her deck, and no power on earth could raise her again.
“Sink her!” Garth cried at length, turning to his friend, “it’s our only chance. If we can’t get her clear of this brute we’re done.”
Quick as thought Wilson darted below again, and a moment later the throb of the pumps broke upon the ears of the inventor.
Would it be possible for the vessel to sink from under her monstrous burden?
Anxiously Garth looked out into the swirling waters, but the saurian appeared to sink quite as fast as the Seal. The strokes of the brute’s paddles, though now feebler, were yet enough to occasion the inventor no small uneasiness.
Neither forward nor backward could the vessel move, although urged on by the full power of her engines. The enormous weight across her deck held her almost motionless.
So the minutes dragged by, each one fraught with the suspense of a lifetime, and there came no change for the better in the situation of the Seal and her occupants, save that the last spark of life had flickered from the monster, and he lay still in death. Yet even this was something to be thankful for. While he lived there had ever been a danger that, by some random stroke of his paddles, he might have smashed in one or other of the vessel’s deck-plates. Now that danger was past.
But still the vessel sank in the crimsoned waters. Soon, unless this sea was of unusual depth, she must touch bottom; and then—a slow, lingering death for the two men aboard her—death by suffocation, deep down in the gloomy depths of this subterranean sea.
The lonely vigil grew too much for Garth at last, and, placing the tube to his lips, he summoned the engineer.
“It’s no use,” he remarked hopelessly, as the latter entered the wheelhouse; “we might as well let things take their course. The brute’s jammed too firmly across the deck for us to move him.”