“Anchor line out! Hard to port!” the girl cried.
“Anchor line out. Hard to port!” came booming back the repetition.
Instantly Doris found her head in a whirl. Dave and Johnny were down a full thousand feet. On each side of their ball a rock wall rose high above them. To crash against it might mean disaster.
“Haul away—Top speed!” came in Dave’s usual calm voice.
“Haul away. Top speed!” Doris called to the control man.
Complete silence followed. Even the “whisperer” appeared to have sensed the tenseness of the situation and had gone off the air.
That there was to be a race against time with their lives as a grand prize, Johnny realized at once. Here they were, several hundred feet down in the black depths of the sea, drifting at a fairly rapid rate toward a rocky wall. If they hit that wall? He shuddered at the thought. The pressure of water at that depth was tremendous. If the ball cracked, nothing could save them.
“Is there anything at all we can do?” he asked Dave.
“Not a thing, I guess,” Dave answered. Then, “Yes! Yes, there might be, at that! There are the levers! They are outside the ball and can be worked from within! I had them fixed up for gathering outside samples. If we lifted them into position, they’d lessen the shock if we hit the wall!”
No sooner said than done! Groping about, Johnny seized a handle here, another there, as Dave was doing. He felt much better when the outside levers were in position. They would provide a little protection, at least.