At that he shook hands with the old man, walked down the broad path with the girl, gripped her hand for an instant, then climbed into his Tub and rowed away.
“Thanks for one grand time,” he called back.
“You’re welcome, and thanks for coming,” was Mildred’s answer. And the hills echoed back, “thanks—thanks.”
CHAPTER V
WHISPERING DEPTHS
Johnny had an active mind. Figuring and planning were almost continuous activities with him. Sometimes he really tried to slow the process up, but his mind would keep right on, figuring and planning.
As he rowed slowly back to the boat, his thoughts were particularly active. There were things to be done. He would see that they were done, in the end; he surely would. By going down in the steel ball as many times as Dave wanted him to, and by taking pictures, he’d put Dave in debt to him. Then he’d persuade Mildred to go down in the steel ball. Dave would like that. Then, at just the right time, he and Mildred would ask Dave to help find that trading boat at the bottom of the sea, and to float it once more.
Then they would get busy on those spies, he and Mildred and—and anyone else who would help. It was a patriotic duty, by thunder! It surely was! In his mind’s eye he saw the map of the Caribbean Sea, these islands at one side, the Panama Canal on the other. If the Europeans got these islands, what would happen to the canal? Filled with rocks and mud—that was the answer! They’d bomb the very daylights out of it. Yes, they must uncover those spies—at least some of them. He wondered whether the green arrow would show tonight, and whether he would be able to make any sense out of the numbers he had written down in his notebook.
“It’s some sort of code,” he told himself repeatedly. “If I can decipher it we may get somewhere.”
But here he was alongside the Sea Nymph, and Dave was saying:
“Hello, Johnny. We’re shifting our position tonight—coming in a little closer. Tomorrow afternoon I’d like you to go down with me to get some pictures. You won’t mind, will you?”