CHAPTER XVI An Explosion Impends

THERE was now no chance to avert the explosion of the time bomb within the coal barge. On the appointed time it would go off as arranged and unless the mechanism by some freak of luck refused to work; but the chances on this score were few indeed. The mechanism represented the very latest scientific thought and the bomb was essentially for submarine work of this character.

"Looks, chum, as though we were in for the fireworks," smiled Dick, who was as cool as though he were standing on the twenty-five yard line at Brighton waiting for the ball to be passed for a try at a goal from the field.

Jay had not yet given up hope of getting the Nautilus moving, or of escaping from her in some way. He looked at his watch. Little more than a minute until the bomb would go off!

"Why in the name of sense don't they start the engines of the Jules Verne and back her away from the barge?" he ejaculated in consternation. By moving the Jules Verne the Nautilus also would be moved.

"Didn't you hear Larry say there was a breakdown in the engine room of the Jules Verne that was the cause of the whole trouble?" put back Dick, who was by far the more self-possessed of the two.

Slowly Jay shook his head in affirmation. Memory had fled with the rapid flow of events of the last quarter of an hour. Was it any wonder his senses reeled? Two youths completely trapped in a diving chamber that was poised directly over a coal barge in which a high explosive time bomb was set to go off now at any time!

There was a chance, of course, that the detonation might not be severe enough to damage the Nautilus. The bomb might explode outward or downward instead of spending its energy upward under the keel of the diving bell. In that event the shock might not be sufficient to rend the seams of the light steel chamber in which the Brighton boys were crouched awaiting the inevitable crash. If—but no one could tell under circumstances like these just what would happen.

"If we could only get into the air-lock we would be farther away from the explosion and less likely of being bashed up," said Jay as he looked toward the exit chamber.

"Yes, and if we could get into the air-lock we could get out into the access tube," added Dick.

Steadily they gazed into each other's eyes. Jay held his own watch in his hand, while Dick at intervals looked at the tiny steel clock behind a wire socket on the side of the Nautilus. By the rays of an incandescent bulb Dick could see that the minute hand had just turned twenty-seven minutes after one o'clock.

Tick by tick the clock was measuring off the few seconds that remained until the time bomb in the coal bunker underneath was scheduled to go off. Like two men sentenced to die before an enemy firing squad the Brighton lads stood facing each other in the diving compartment. Just the trace of a smile showed over their faces. They clenched hands in a firm grasp.

"In half a minute more——"

The jingling of the telephone bell jarred the stiff silence and stirred the boys from their stupor. As though hypnotized, they had stood awaiting the finish, not thinking of any further movement calculated to free them from their predicament. They had figured everything that could be done for their rescue having been thought of, or tried out.

But now the jangle of the telephone receiver, Jay moved to take it off the hook and as he did so his right foot struck the pin that held the aquascope in position. When the pin was removed the trapdoor, or aquascope as they called it, opened upward of its own accord on an air-cushion that worked on the principle of a door cushion.

And that was what happened at this particular moment in the Nautilus. The aquascope opened upward, leaving the limpid waters of the Sound purling at the very feet of the two boys. Just for a second the boys recoiled in horror, thinking now they were in greater danger. With the door open there was more chance of the force of the explosion below being felt within the Nautilus.

Dick sprang to close the aquascope in the few seconds that remained until the explosion. But imagine his surprise when Jay intercepted and hurled him away from the trap.

"Quick, chum, follow me," cried Jay in wild acclaim.

The opening of the aquascope had given the youth an inspiration. Yes, he would do it. It was a last desperate chance, but there was no reason why it would not work if carried out in time.

Even as Dick started back in consternation when thrust from the aquascope Jay literally leaped feet first into the aquascope as though he were jumping into a miniature swimming pool. Down he went until his feet struck at last on the deck of the coal barge. In this position he stood in water up to his chest, with his head and shoulders still in the Nautilus.

"What are you going to do?" gasped Dick. He had failed yet to grasp the significance of his chum's quick move.

"Dive out of here and take my chances on shooting up to the surface," came the instantaneous reply.

Then it dawned on Dick. What his chum intended doing was to let himself out of the Nautilus through the trap door, dive free of the salvage chamber and shoot up to the surface. And why not? They were down about eighty-five feet, and they were accustomed to the pressure of that depth since the pressure in the Nautilus had had to be equal that of the water outside in order to open the trap safely. A sickly grin spread across the Brighton youth's face. Why hadn't either he or Jay thought of that before?

"Come on, Dick, follow me," urged Jay, and almost before the words escaped his lips he quickly took a full inhalation into his lungs, gave one last look at his chum and ducked down head first into the waters of Long Island Sound through the open trap of the Nautilus.

Like some weird specter in a motion picture drama Dick beheld the spectacle at his feet. First he saw Jay's head under the water; then he saw his chum flatten out under the bottom of the Nautilus, and as he looked again he could faintly make out Jay's feet as they faded away from the darker expanse of the barge deck below. Jay had cleared the Nautilus safely.

"Here goes, too," gasped Dick to himself as he leaped through the aquascope. Almost instinctively as he let go, his eyes lifted to the tiny marine clock in its basket-like cage. Right on the half hour mark showed the minute hand. With a last frantic gasp for breath Dick pulled himself down into the embrace of water. Down out of the Nautilus into the embrace of water and into such close proximity with that infernal coal bomb!

"If I can only hurl myself—quickly—to—one—side—before——"

Just then the bomb exploded with a frightful force that rent the waters of the Sound in that particular locality with the force of an earthquake. In the midst of this maelstrom were the two Brighton youths who had taken a last desperate chance when it seemed they were doomed to die like rats in a trap.

What—Where——!!!

Up on the deck of the Jules Verne there was the maddest confusion. It had maintained for nearly half an hour, since the chief engineer had first reported trouble from below. Frantically, members of the crew were endeavoring to make the necessary repairs. In the meantime, every one knew by now of the perilous position of the two Brighton boys who had been working for some time in the Nautilus.

"My God, man, we've got to get those boys up somehow!" raved Superintendent Brown as he paced the deck.

Captain Austin, his face tense with anxiety, was directing the knot of men who were endeavoring to string up again a set of cables that ran down along the access tube and connected under the Nautilus. Fortunately, the captain had seen the break coming just before the steel parted and the severed ends had been held before they had dropped overboard.

Watch in hand, Captain Austin was keeping tabs on the time limit until the bomb in the coal barge was scheduled to go off. Eagerly the captain had scanned the bay in every direction for some other vessel that might stand by and give them help. But not a craft showed anywhere close, not even a sailboat. Unfortunately, the Jules Verne had not as yet been fitted out with wireless, and there was, consequently, no way to communicate ashore or with any other vessel.

"How are you coming, boys, on those cables?" Superintendent "Montey" Brown kept inquiring every minute or so of the repair crew.

They were making progress, but it was slow work. Splicing was no easy task, especially with steel wire. If brand new cables could be run out it would be a much easier proposition; but that was out of the question with the Nautilus on the bottom of the Sound over the coal barge eighty-five feet under water. And there were no diving suits as yet on the Jules Verne for just such emergency cases as these.

"Tell them to keep a stout heart," Captain Austin reminded Larry Seymour several times, who was at the telephone and signal booth connecting with the Nautilus.

Larry in turn reported that he could not always get a reply from below.

"Probably they are trying some way to worm their way out," suggested Larry, who was nearly beside himself with worry for his two old pals. Poor old Jay and Dick! They had been such good friends for so long. Was it possible now that some disaster was to overtake them?

It was while Larry was thus painfully reviewing the possibilities of the next few minutes that Captain Austin suggested to the boys in the Nautilus that they try and put the time bomb in the coal barge out of commission. Eagerly the would-be rescuers on the Jules Verne awaited developments.

"It can't be done now, for we have moved away from the opening in the deck of the barge a yard or so," had been the answer sent up by Jay after the two imprisoned Brighton youths had inspected the barge through the aquascope of the Nautilus.

Well, the only chance hope of rescue now, it seemed, depended on getting the cables spliced and the winches winding before the bomb was detonated. Like beavers the deckmen of the Jules Verne were exerting themselves. It was a fight for two lives, and the men of the Jules Verne were spending themselves to the limit.

"How much time remains?" asked Superintendent Brown after what seemed an eternity of tugging with the torn cables.

In turn he was told that less than five minutes remained. By the clock in the chart house of the Jules Verne it was just twenty-six minutes after one. And Jay had sent up word that the bomb was set for one-thirty!

As a last resort Captain Austin called for volunteers and asked that they dive from the deck of the Jules Verne as the bomb was exploded in the coal barge and see whether they could find any trace of the two Brighton boys in the water, or learn whether or not the Nautilus had been ripped open wide by the force of the explosion. A half dozen stepped forward, and the captain asked them all to be ready.

"Stand by the telephone and try to get them so soon as the explosion goes off, for they may not be hurt at all," were Larry's orders. With receiver glued to his right ear he sat awaiting the crash.

Just then the foreman in charge of the cable repairs reported that he could commence to wind in another half minute.

"Tell Thacker and Monaghan we are going to raise them now by the cables and to keep a stiff upper lip down there," commanded Austin.

Larry buzzed and buzzed, but in vain. No answer came from the interior of the Nautilus. What had happened? Larry was frantic as he pushed down hard and harder on the button.

"Look!" cried one of the crew forward as he pointed off the starboard bow of the Jules Verne at an object that had just shot up out of the water. It was the head of a man!

As members of the crew of the Jules Verne, with Superintendent Brown and Captain Austin in the lead, swarmed to the side of the ship there came an upheaval from beneath and a tremor that shook the old boat from stem to stern. It was as though a geyser had let loose directly under the new diving ship.

"The bomb! It has exploded!" Larry Seymour, his face ashen white, sought anew to get a telephone communication with the two Brighton boys whom he loved so dearly.

But even as he despaired there came a welcome cry forward.

"Thacker! It's Thacker! He escaped unharmed from the Nautilus."

But where was Dick?