“Amen!” Garth responded fervently; then, fearing that his nerve would give way unless he exerted himself, he applied his energies to the restoration of his unconscious friends; while the Yankee, dragging the hideous relics of the narrowly-averted disaster to the rail, flung them far out into the stream.
Soon Garth had the satisfaction of seeing his three friends once more upon their feet. Badly shaken they were by their terrible plunge over the cataract, yet thankful that they had been spared the ordeal which had fallen to the lot of Garth and the Yankee.
“I guess there’s no call to make a fuss,” the latter said as they crowded round him. “I couldn’t have been knocked about so badly as you, or I wouldn’t have come to in time to check those brutes.”
“Thank God you did!” the scientist cried. “This must be a warning to us in the future. Knowing that this subterranean river contains such monstrous creatures, we must be ever upon our guard, lest upon another occasion they should succeed in overcoming us.”
His listeners shuddered at his words.
Though none but Silas and the inventor had seen the river-creatures—mud devils, Garth called them—yet the latter’s vivid description of the things had aroused in the three an unspeakable horror and loathing.
For a week the Seal remained aground on the mud-bank, while Garth and the engineer, often up to the waist in water, thoroughly overhauled her, fixing duplicate propellers in place of those broken, and replacing the shattered glass with new panes from the store-room.
Numerous minor damages which the Seal had sustained in her leap they also repaired.
And over them, while they worked, Haverly and the baronet took turns on guard, but no further sign came from the river-creatures, save that once a hideous head rose out of the mud fifty feet from the Seal, to vanish like a flash ere Seymour, who was on guard at the time, could draw trigger.
No attack followed this appearance, however, and at length all was completed. The last rivet had been driven into place, the last bolt fixed, and nothing remained but to get the Seal afloat once more.