A port hole eyed him directly in front. Jay was minded to step into the enclosure and thus raise himself into a position where he could grasp the twisted deck rail and pull himself aboard. He endeavored to thrust his right leg into the opening but found the distance too great for the weight of his iron shoe, with the pressure of water against it. Just at that moment his attention was attracted by two oblique lines drawn sharply across his line of vision against the background of the ship's funnels.
"What in the world——"
And then it dawned on him. Weddigen was already aboard. The lines were his air and signal lines.
"Beat me to it, I guess," was his mental comment. This made him only the more determined to get into that cabin at all hazards.
Signaling that he desired to be raised a bit in the water Jay waited until he had been hauled up four or five feet. As his body came abreast of the ship's rail he grasped it firmly with one hand and signalled sharply with the other to stop. It was easy work to clamber over the rail.
And now for the captain's cabin! Groping his way forward along the deck from state room to state room, maintaining his footing on the sloping incline by grasping the battered woodwork, he came at last to a companionway leading below. It was just aft the pilot house, and this, he surmised, was the way to what had once been the quarters of the Dominion's skipper. It was necessary to go slowly and surely, for well this young diver knew the danger of entangled air lines.
As he drew a powerful submarine flashlight from his belt and touched its illumination spring the life lines of his fellow diver brushed his helmet.
"Weddigen got the jump on me, sure enough," he thought.
Floundering along as carefully as he knew how, the Brighton boy let himself down the companionway on the rickety stairs. It was ticklish business. At any moment the air lines might be fouled by the swaying currents and the diver have to fight for his life or perish of suffocation.
"But if that big bully Weddigen can do it, I can do it," he assured himself.