"I don't care how impossible it is—here we are! We're stuck on a mountain-top, and if we don't leave our bones on it I'm a porpoise."
By this time the Jules Verne was alongside, and De Beauxchamps shouted up:
"I was running twenty feet under water, keeping along with the Ark, when my light suddenly revealed the mountain ahead. I hurried up and tried to warn you, but it was too late."
"Can't you go down and see where we're fast?" asked Cosmo.
"Certainly; that's just what I was about to propose," replied the
Frenchman, and immediately the submersible disappeared.
After a long time, during which Cosmo succeeded in allaying the fears of his passengers, the submersible reappeared, and De Beauxchamps made his report. He said that the Ark was fast near the bow on a bed of shelly limestone.
He thought that by using the utmost force of the Jules Verne, whose engines were very powerful, in pushing the Ark, combined with the backing of her own engines, she might be got off.
"Hurry up, then, and get to work," cried Captain Arms. "This flood is on the ebb, and a few hours more will find us stuck here like a ray with his saw in a whale's back."
De Beauxchamps's plan was immediately adopted. The Jules Verne descended, and pushed with all her force, while the engines of the Ark were reversed, and within fifteen minutes they were once more afloat.
Without waiting for a suggestion from Cosmo Versál, the Frenchman carefully inspected with his searchlight the bottom of the Ark where she had struck, and when he came to the surface he was able to report that no serious damage had resulted.