“Perhaps we’ll go down in the steel ball and reach them before that sub arrives,” he said.
“But Dave!” Doris exclaimed. “What can one submarine do for another on the bottom? Surely they can’t raise it!”
“No—o, they couldn’t. Nor could we. But then,” Dave sighed, “there must be some way. We’ll have to leave that to the navy, I guess.”
Two hours later the steel ball rested on the sandy bottom some two hundred feet down, and within twenty feet of the submarine’s dark bulk. As Dave and Doris stared out of their window, they saw a face in a port of the submarine. It was Mildred, and she was waving at them.
“Only twenty feet,” Doris murmured, “and yet for the moment there’s nothing we can do! How strange—and how—how terrible!”
CHAPTER XIX
ON THE BOTTOM
Night was falling on the waters of the blue Caribbean when Johnny and Samatan finally reached the Sea Nymph, and were told of the sub’s predicament. For a full hour after darkness fell, Doris and Johnny sat on the after deck. But they spoke hardly a word. They were thinking of a brave, American girl, two hundred feet below surface, in a foreign submarine.
“Johnny!” Doris gripped the boy’s arm suddenly. “Is that a light—or is it a star?” She pointed out to sea.
“A light! No, it’s a star. No! No! It is a light! See! It blinks!”
“Dave!” Doris called. “The navy is coming!”