"Slow down, Speake!" called Matt to the helmsman.
The jingle of a bell, down in the motor room, was heard faintly, and the submarine's speed fell off perceptibly. The cluster of starlike points bubbled onward, missed the bow of the Grampus by a few feet, and vanished in the gloom on the port side.
"Vat it iss?" murmured Carl, rubbing a hand dazedly across his eyes. "Dere iss lighdning pugs on der land, und I vonder iss dere lighdning pug fishes in der sea? Dot looked schust like a shark mit some search lights on his headt."
"I'm a Fiji if there was any fish about that," averred the bewildered Dick. "Can you rise to it, matey?" he asked, turning to Matt. "What sort of a sizing do you give it?"
The king of the motor boys was puzzled.
"It might be a piece of drift from the shore," he answered, "or the fragment of a wreck."
"Aber it moofed!" exclaimed Carl. "It moofed droo der vater schust like it vas alife!"
"The current may have caused that. There are all kinds of currents in this part of the ocean."
"Und der lights, Matt. Pieces oof wreck don'd haf lights like dot!"
"That was a trick of the phosphorescence. There were probably nails or spikes in the timber, and wherever they projected and caused a ripple there was a glow in the water."