"Are you going to put on diving suits and walk around looking for her?" asked Ned.
"No, that would take too long," answered Tom. "We'll just cruise about, beginning with small circles and gradually enlarging them, spiral fashion. We'll have to go up a few feet to get off the bottom."
As Tom was about to give this order Ned looked from the glass windows. The powerful searchlight had been switched on and its gleams illuminated the ocean in the immediate vicinity of the craft.
As was generally the case, the light attracted hundreds of fish of various shapes, sizes, and, since the waters were tropical, beautiful colors. They swarmed in front of the glass windows, and Ned was glad to note that there were no large sea creatures, like horse mackerel or big sharks. Somehow or other, Ned had a horror of big fish. There were sharks in the warm waters, he well knew, but he hoped they would keep away, even though he did not have to encounter any in the diving suit.
Slowly the submarine began to move. And as she was being elevated slightly above the ocean bed, to enable her to proceed, Ned uttered an exclamation and pointed to the windows.
"Look, Tom!" he cried.
"What is it?" the young inventor asked.
"Snakes!" whispered his chum. "Millions of 'em! Out there in the water! Look how they're writhing about!"
Tom Swift laughed.
"Those aren't snakes!" he said. "That's serpent grass—a form of very long seaweed which grows on certain bottoms. It attains a length of fifty feet sometimes, and the serpent weed looks a good deal like a nest of snakes. That's how it got its name. I didn't know there was any here. But we must have dropped down into a bed of it."