CHAPTER XV Trapped in the Diving Bell

JAY Thacker and Dick Monaghan, together with their friend Larry Seymour, took to the new diving ship of the Bridgeford Salvage Company like the proverbial ducks to water. Starting with their first trip the day they reclaimed a binnacle lamp from the deck of the lost submarine chaser E-70, they showed a ready aptitude for the work at hand and soon proved themselves adepts.

News of the Jules Verne's accomplishments had been flashed to all corners of the world and maritime engineers were much interested. Many of them came to inquire into her merits and were well pleased after an inspection of the twin craft.

Usually Jay and Dick worked together in the diving chamber. At times they had little to do except to keep an eye upon things generally. Upon these occasions they had ample opportunity to discuss their own personal affairs, and so naturally fell into talk about the new college year. Both were anxious to make the 'varsity football team for one thing and they were wondering how many of the old boys would be back and what the chances would be for turning out a championship team. The gridiron sport was their favorite.

"Wonder if Bob Greer and Chick Wharton will be back?" speculated Jay, recalling that it was a great game the pair had won through their individual efforts in the last game they had played for Brighton just before enlisting for the war.

"Yes, and I hope Jack Hammond and Ted Wainwright are on hand, too," replied Dick, recalling two of his best chums who had enlisted early in the Navy and gotten into the submarine service.

One day in early August the boys had gone down in the Nautilus to place a bomb under the deck of a coal barge that had been located that morning. More than two thousand tons of coal were to be reclaimed and the boys realized they would come in for a good premium on the job, which meant a lot to them, in view of their anxiety to get together as much of a pile as possible before college opened in the fall.

Larry Seymour as usual was in charge of the big centrifugal pump—the "All Day Sucker," as the crew had termed the old pump with which coal cargoes were raised.

Everything was working fine. Without a hitch the Nautilus was dropped in the Sound by the Jules Verne until the access tube lay like the hypotenuse of a huge right-angled triangle that had the Jules Verne for its upper apex and the bottom of the sea for its base.

Casting about over the deck of the barge, Jay, who was really the executive officer of the diving chamber with Dick as his assistant, found a suitable spot for a base of operations. Quickly the aquascope of the Nautilus was rolled back and the waters of the Sound lapped at the edges of the trap door.

It was necessary only to make an opening large enough to insert the time bomb that Jay had brought down from the Jules Verne. This was but the matter of a few seconds' work. While Jay worked at the opening Dick arranged the mechanism of the time clock. His knowledge of and his predilection for mechanics made him an expert at this kind of business.

"She's all ready," he told Jay in a few minutes.

"And I'm all ready for you, too, chum," came the reply.

Together they lowered away with their legs through the aquascope until they stood on the deck of the barge. They were in water up to their knees, while the rest of their bodies were safe and dry within the enclosure of the Nautilus. Carefully the bomb was inserted and so held that it would be most likely to rip open a good-sized hole in the deck when it exploded.

"Let's go, chum," counseled Jay as they completed this final phase of their immediate task. So saying they crawled back into the Nautilus and while Dick attended closing and making fast again the aquascope, Jay turned to the telephone to tell Larry they were ready to be raised again.

"You set that bomb to go off soon, didn't you?" called Jay to his chum, as he took down the telephone receiver.

"Yep, in seventeen minutes—just at one-thirty sharp," answered Dick.

To which Jay nodded in approval and then turned to the telephone.

"Raise away, Larry; we're all set down here and anxious to get out of the way."

In the small chamber of the Nautilus both boys could hear the voice at the other end of the wire when the one holding the receiver kept it slightly removed from his ear.

"Will take you up in two minutes," came the reply from Larry on the deck of the Jules Verne.

The two minutes went by, but so far as the boys could tell the Nautilus was not in motion. The depth dial still showed a submergence of eighty feet, the distance to the deck of the coal barge.

"Must have forgotten us," mused Jay as he stepped again to the telephone.

"Your two minutes are up and we are still waiting, Larry; better hurry it up."

There was a pause, and then came the voice of Larry from the other end:

"Cap wants to know whether you have set your time bomb and when it is to go off."

"All set to go off at half-past one—in just a quarter of an hour," was Jay's rejoinder.

Jay turned from the telephone with the statement to his chum that the air pump of the Jules Verne was working none too well and that the chief engineer, with Cap Austin, was trying to find out what was the matter.

"Well, all I've got to say is they better get it working before very long or you and I are in danger of being blown up when that bomb goes off in the coal barge directly underneath us," suggested Dick. He was not exactly an alarmist; but the situation had possibilities that did not appear at all inviting.

"You forget there is another way for us to be raised," was Jay's come-back.

Dick had forgotten for the moment.

"You forget that when the air pump fails the Nautilus is raised by steel cables. Deckmen wind us up with those huge winches that stand well forward on the Jules Verne near the hatchway leading to the access tube."

"Sure enough!" exclaimed Dick. This secondary method had quite escaped his memory for the present. Reassured, the boys put fear out of their minds and awaited developments.

Five minutes sped by, and still nothing happened. Going to the telephone Jay asked again how they were getting along above.

"Gee, pal, I'm sorry, but they don't seem to be making much headway as yet," came Larry's reply.

As Jay listened he could tell that Captain Austin was talking to Larry. He could hear him mention the word "bomb."

"Cap says it don't look like as though we could get the pump going in a hurry, so he is going to take no chances and will haul you up with the cables," sang out Larry in return.

"All right, let 'er go, for the love of Mike!" yelled Jay.

Time was indeed getting short. In ten minutes more the bomb in the coal barge would go off. There was nothing else to do. Either the Nautilus had to be raised at once or the time bomb in the coal barge had to be disengaged to avert what might prove to be a disaster for the two Brighton boys. Since the air pump was out of commission it was impossible for the boys to go out through the air-lock into the access tube. There was no way to swing back the heavy doors with the compressed air cut off.

Neither could the ballast tanks under the Nautilus and the access tube be blown out so long as the air pump on the Jules Verne was out of commission.

In this extremity the cables were the only means of lifting the Nautilus out of the depths. The men must be working now, for it was some job to wind the winches by hand, and progress through the water would be so much slower than if the diving chamber were "trimmed" in the regular way.

Jay and Dick were not cowards. They had proved that a number of times in school and while they served in the Navy abroad during the war. Each youth had proved his gameness on more than one occasion. So in the present extremity they were far from flabbergasted at the failure of the air apparatus on the mother ship just after they had placed a time bomb in the coal barge. Cool and collected they awaited developments. Each was a quick-witted lad and could be counted on to make the best of any situation.

Finally the telephone bell rang. Jay wrenched off the receiver. Larry was talking like a phonograph in high gear.

"Bad news, fellows. Just as they were winding for the first heavy pull on the cables the right main cable on the under side of the access tube snapped clean in two. The whole system of cables is put out of business. Cap says——"

At this juncture Captain Austin leaped forward and took up the telephone.

"How much time have you got until your bomb goes off, boys?" he called down the tube, quietly and without any show of apprehension.

Jay eyed his watch for a second.

"Not more than five minutes," came Jay's even reply.

"There's only one thing to do," the Captain told him in reassuring tones. "Our pump has gone back on us and the steel cables have parted on us—a combination of hard luck that would not happen once in a thousand years. Can you get your bomb back in any way and detach it?"

Jay said they would try, and turned toward his chum. "It's our only chance now, Dick," he told him.

Together they flung back the aquascope to grapple for the bomb they had set under the deck of the coal barge. But to their horror and dismay they found that the tide had swung the Nautilus slightly away from the opening in the barge—at least three or four feet!