Some boat had discharged the torpedo, and it seemed certain that those who had tossed the rope over his head and pulled him from the submarine's deck had been on the same boat.
Had it been the intention of Matt's enemies to haul him aboard their boat, or only to strangle him and keep him in the water until the Grampus got well away, then cast him off and let him sink to the bottom?
Matt's humane instincts rebelled against the latter supposition. His enemies, he reasoned, had intended hauling him aboard their boat, but in some manner had lost hold of the end of the line.
A Whitehead torpedo costs something like four thousand dollars, and is altogether too valuable to leave adrift when it has been fired and misses its target. Those who had discharged the torpedo would surely look for it—and, if they found it, they would also find Matt.
This caused the young motorist a good deal of trepidation. He reasoned, however, that on account of the darkness of the night and the fog, his mysterious foes would probably remain in the part of the ocean where the torpedo had been fired and look for it in the daylight. Between that hour and daylight, Matt was hoping to be picked up.
The compressed air in a torpedo will carry it about nine hundred yards. This torpedo had not gone its full distance, on account of an automatic misplacement of the "tripper" and starting lever, but enough of the air had been used so that Matt's ride was a short one.
After a few minutes the propellers ceased to revolve, and Matt and the steel cylinder came to a stop, heaving up and down on the surface of the water. Yielding to the pull of the current, the torpedo started erratically seaward, and another fear was born in Matt's mind.
The farther seaward he was carried, the more difficult it would be to fall in with a passing boat, and the farther off would be his rescue. To carry his grewsome thoughts still farther, there was a good chance that he would succumb to thirst and hunger before his woeful plight was discovered, and——
But this gloomy train of reflections was interrupted. In the distance Matt could see a glow of light, shining hazily through the fog. Was it the search light of the Grampus, or a gleam from the other boat?
Divided between hopes and doubts, he waited and watched. The glow presently resolved itself into a pencil of light, and he became fairly positive that it was the searching eye of the submarine.