Up they shot, at what seemed lightning speed.
They were on the surface almost before they realized it. The welcome light shone in through the conning tower lenses, and the sunlight sparkled on the dripping back of Mr. Ironsides' strange sea monster.
"Let us open the conning tower hatch and go out on deck," suggested the inventor, after notifying old Sam in the engine room to switch his power from the electrical motors to gasolene.
They were nothing loath to do so. Although the time had seemed short, they had been below the surface for some hours, and the air was beginning to feel stuffy.
Tom inhaled with delight the fresh atmosphere, and the cool breeze that swept over the lake. He took it in by great lungfulls. The others did the same.
A glance about at the surface of the water showed the terrible havoc the bomb had wrought on the submerged wreck. The surface of the lake in their vicinity was strewn with beams and bits of timber. The wreck had literally been blown into a thousand pieces.
All at once, Tom's attention was caught by something close at hand. At first he thought it was an ordinary bit of wreckage. He leaned over the chain-rail the better to view it. Suddenly, however, he recoiled with a cry of horror. The object, lazily bobbing on the surface, had suddenly turned upward.
Then Tom saw that what had attracted his attention was the body of a man, undoubtedly one of the unfortunates who had been caught below decks when the schooner sank. And now the bomb had set him free from his tomb.
Even as Tom's horrified gaze rested for an instant on the grisly object, it vanished, leaving a widening circle of wavelets about it. Instinctively, Tom bared his head.
"I am saying farewell to a brave man," he said, as the others hastened to his side to inquire the reason of his sudden cry.