"Move us forward until I give you one bell and then stop right on the trigger," was the order to the engine room of the mother ship. Instantly the Nautilus was propelled forward through the water. At the ports stood the two officials straining their eyes intently.
Jay and Dick stood conversing in low tones, while Larry kept up his inspection of the diving chamber. This was a new experience for him and he was distinctly not at home.
"Looks like it is a small craft of some kind ... might be a destroyer ... perhaps a fishing boat ... no, it's bigger and of a different design ... well heeled over to port ... close enough."
Fragments of the conversation between Cap Austin and the yard superintendent floated back to the ears of the Brighton boys. They were as interested as their elders in the proceedings. What an extraordinary thing if on this first trip of the Jules Verne and the Nautilus a lost ship should be found!
"Don't you think we had better stop now and drift up a bit with the tide?" the superintendent was asking.
Captain Austin thought it better to go just a little closer. Ten or fifteen seconds passed when he leaped forward suddenly and rang the bell for the engines to be stopped immediately. Quietly and with scarcely a tremor the Nautilus glided to a standstill in the deep. The locomotion of the craft surely was perfect.
"Navy craft of some kind," ejaculated the superintendent after a brief pause. During the interim he had been studying the object now close at hand.
"I can see old battleship gray paint first of all," he added.
A naval craft! For the moment Captain Austin was nonplussed. Surely no one knew Long Island Sound better than he; and he had no recollection on the moment of any naval craft having been sunk there for some years. True, during the war, there had been naval maneuvers of all kinds in the Sound, particularly of the lighter draught vessels stationed at various points from the Brooklyn Navy Yard up to Rock Island, Maine. But none——And then it dawned on his mind: A sub-chaser—the E-70. Sure enough, such a craft had been accidentally rammed one day by one of the new Lake submarines just off the ways. Although valiant efforts had been made to save the craft after she had been rammed, all the work had been in vain. Down she had gone in many fathoms of water.
"I have it. It's the E-70 that went down last August," exclaimed the captain as he turned to the superintendent.