The Tarantula anchored there for the night and the boats rowed about seeking for the lost men but their bodies did not reappear and doubtless the swift current swept them out to sea. Early the next day the boys and the officers rowed over to the submarine, whose crew was now installed on board the Tarantula and searched her thoroughly. She had settled in shallow water and access to her was easy through the top plate.
Their diligence was rewarded by the discovery in a steel bound chest, that evidently had belonged to Bellman, of the long missing formula of Chapinite. They found, too, unmistakable proofs that the government which the authorities had suspected all along had really been the man’s employer. How he drifted into their service, was, of course, only surmise. The submarine was laden with four gross of straw-wrapped boxes containing enough of the explosive to have blown up the navies of the world, if mixed with the right quantity of gunpowder. At Lieutenant Selby’s suggestion the boxes were weighted and sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico the next day where they still lie. It was too dangerous a cargo to carry in the form the daring Bellman had packed it.
As for Pork Chops and Quatty, before the Tarantula sailed their hearts were made glad by presents of rifles, revolvers and ammunition and permission to take possession of the canoes and all the duffle the boys had left at Camp Walrus. Pork Chops had been so fascinated by Quatty’s tales of life among the Seminoles that he had decided to cast in his lot with him and, on condition that Quatty gave him a proper introduction to the tribe, to go shares on the Carrier Dove with him after they fetched her from her anchorage.
Ben Stubbs and the boys, in the Tarantula’s launch, early the next day went back to the sand-spit where the Golden Eagle II had been beached and dismantled her, as soon as the inspection of the submarine was completed. Packed in sections she was placed aboard the destroyer together with the field wireless which was fetched from Camp Walrus, by Lathrop and the negroes.
That evening just as the group of herons, to which the boys had grown so accustomed, were circling above their roosting-places, the Tarantula with a long blast of her siren, swung out of the channel into the shimmering gold of the Gulf. Behind them lay the black outlines of the half-submerged submarine. Forward on deck, squatted the little brown men who were to be set ashore at the first convenient port, as they all had plenty of money to get back to their own country.
The Tarantula’s destination was Hampton Roads, from where the boys and Lieutenant Chapin were to hurry to Washington and relate the whole story. As for Billy Barnes, he was already busy writing out what he called “The biggest beat of the ages, the recovery of Lieutenant Chapin and the Loss of the Mysterious Submarine.”
“It’s good for a whole front page,” he declared, “with pictures of all of us and ‘by William Barnes,’ at the top.”
“What are you thinking of, Frank, old boy?” asked Harry as the destroyer plunged steadily forward through the night,—homeward bound.
Frank laughed, although his thoughts had been grave.
“That we have earned a holiday,” he said, “let’s go on a hunting trip, some place.”