Jack remembered no more. When he came to he was stretched in his bunk in the hold of the Dewey. Ted was bending over him.
"Thank God you are alive, Jack, old chum!" Ted was murmuring, with glad tears brimming from his eyes.
Jack strove to raise himself on one elbow but fell back limply, weak from the terrible struggle through which he had passed.
"How about 'Little Mack'?" he managed finally to ask faintly.
"Alive but yet unconscious," replied Ted, "They have gotten most of the water out of his lungs and are using the pulmotor."
Jack closed his eyes again and murmured a prayer of thanks for his safe deliverance and for the life of his lieutenant.
"Was the Dewey damaged by the mine explosion?" he asked.
Ted replied that so far as could be determined no serious damage had been inflicted, although Officer Cleary had expressed some apprehension as to the condition of the port seams forward on the under side of the hull. The examination was still in progress.
For an hour Jack rested quietly in his bunk. The Dewey had submerged after taking aboard the half-drowned commander and his rescuer, and at a safe depth gotten safely out of the zone of danger. Now she had come to the surface again for further examination of her hull.
Jack and Ted were conversing in low tones, when Bill Witt stumbled along the passageway leading into the men's quarters and stopped beside Jack. His face was stern.