“Yes; but the moment we get up in the air they will fire at the Jove and drop her again.”
“Not if we keep high out of gun range in future,” Frank answered, he sent the machine shoreward.
He was heading his invention to land at a point distant from where the gang were.
But just as she arrived within fifty feet of the shore, there came a grating sound under her keel, and then a heavy shock which ran through her, and almost felled the crew where they stood.
The Jove paused.
She had run into a mud flat.
It had been hidden under the water.
There she stuck, as if held by a vise.
“Confound it!” cried Frank, in tones of vexation, when he saw what happened. “We are in a trap.”
“Put full power into the propellers,” suggested Zamora.