Under such circumstances search for the U-boat was next to impossible. Instead of the usual green radiance of the water Jay found himself in a deadly saffron light, at times almost opaque. Experience had taught him that that meant the sand was in motion. Light conditions, therefore, were not favorable for exploration, since the youth could not see very far in any direction. Peer about as he did between his many enforced flip-flops, he saw nothing of the U-boat, even though the navy men had said it was in these very waters and within a very narrow prescribed circle.
Presently, as he was swept helter-skelter along over the sand hummocks by the twisting waters, he brought up sharp against some object that projected out of the sand like a slim piling. Instinctively he flung out an arm as he was swept close to it. His arm struck with such a resounding whack that for the moment the limb felt numb.
"What in the name of sense is this?" he speculated, unable to see for a moment because of the swirling sand. His mind conjectured all manner of things.
Clinging tenaciously to his new-found support, Jay ran his hands up and down the protuberance. It was smooth and round like some cylindrical metal object. But what was it?
Soon there came a rift in the cloud of sand particles and the filtered sun's rays came down through the opulent green. In that moment Jay cleared the sand from the eyes of his helmet that he might scrutinize the object more clearly. Turning his gaze upward, he beheld the boxed lens glass of a periscope—the eye of the submarine!
"Great guns! here's the old U-boat buried to her eyelashes in the bottom of the sea!" ejaculated the diver, surprised and stunned at his discovery. There was no doubt of it; here was the periscopic pole of a submarine with its great eyes still intact. But what of the U-boat itself? Was it there under the sandy floor of the ocean? And by what queer prank of the tides had it come to be covered over?
In succession, these questions flitted through the mind of the lad as he further inspected his new find. Leaving it, he paced off first in one direction and then in another, keeping this up until he had run a radius in every direction from the periscope pole. But nowhere was there any trace of a ship's hull within a reasonable distance of that stranded ship's eye.
Jay was all excited. To think! He had located the lost submarine in such an extraordinary manner!
"I'll have to get out of here, though, and mighty quick," was his next thought as he began to feel that queer pain across the eyes and at the base of the brain that tells a diver he has had enough for one time of the deadly sea pressure.