"What are you going to do?" gasped Dick. He had failed yet to grasp the significance of his chum's quick move.
"Dive out of here and take my chances on shooting up to the surface," came the instantaneous reply.
Then it dawned on Dick. What his chum intended doing was to let himself out of the Nautilus through the trap door, dive free of the salvage chamber and shoot up to the surface. And why not? They were down about eighty-five feet, and they were accustomed to the pressure of that depth since the pressure in the Nautilus had had to be equal that of the water outside in order to open the trap safely. A sickly grin spread across the Brighton youth's face. Why hadn't either he or Jay thought of that before?
"Come on, Dick, follow me," urged Jay, and almost before the words escaped his lips he quickly took a full inhalation into his lungs, gave one last look at his chum and ducked down head first into the waters of Long Island Sound through the open trap of the Nautilus.
Like some weird specter in a motion picture drama Dick beheld the spectacle at his feet. First he saw Jay's head under the water; then he saw his chum flatten out under the bottom of the Nautilus, and as he looked again he could faintly make out Jay's feet as they faded away from the darker expanse of the barge deck below. Jay had cleared the Nautilus safely.
"Here goes, too," gasped Dick to himself as he leaped through the aquascope. Almost instinctively as he let go, his eyes lifted to the tiny marine clock in its basket-like cage. Right on the half hour mark showed the minute hand. With a last frantic gasp for breath Dick pulled himself down into the embrace of water. Down out of the Nautilus into the embrace of water and into such close proximity with that infernal coal bomb!
"If I can only hurl myself—quickly—to—one—side—before——"
Just then the bomb exploded with a frightful force that rent the waters of the Sound in that particular locality with the force of an earthquake. In the midst of this maelstrom were the two Brighton youths who had taken a last desperate chance when it seemed they were doomed to die like rats in a trap.
What—Where——!!!