With a fierce effort Bob concentrated his wandering wits upon the bomb. Someway, somehow, he must reach the infernal machine and extinguish the fuse.
Dropping the revolver, he rolled over and over, a lurch of the boat, running erratically with no guiding hand at either wheel or motor, helping him to reach the foot of the periscope table.
With the utmost difficulty he caught the legs of the rigidly secured table and pulled himself to his knees. The cup, from which he had taken only a few swallows of coffee, stood on a floor just below the end of the table, and not more than a foot from the burning fuse. By a miracle the cup had not been overturned.
For him to reach the fuse in his weakened condition was impossible; but, if he could regain his feet and kick the cup over the coffee that remained in it might quench the fire of the fuse.
Three times he endeavored to draw himself erect by means of the table, but succeeded only in dropping backward as though pushed by a heavy, resistless hand. But the fourth time he managed to remain upright, trembling with the strain he had put upon himself.
It seemed a trifling thing to overset the coffee cup, but Bob Steele had never planned a harder task.
There are but few things in this life, however, that will not yield to pluck and determination, and fortune favored Bob in his grave fight.
The Grampus pitched forward, rising aft and making a steep incline of the floor. Bob’s feet slipped, and he lost his hold on the table. As he came heavily down he shot against a stool, which was overturned and upset the cup. The liquid in the cup had slopped over the sides, and with the overturning a miniature wave of brown rolled along the inclined floor.
There followed a hiss as it engulfed the tiny blaze at the end of the fuse, and then a little spiral of smoke eddied upward.
This much Bob saw, and a fierce exultation ran through him. The bomb was harmless—but where was Ah Sin? Would he not come back, discover what Bob had accomplished, and again set a match to the fuse?’