CHAPTER IX Found—One U-Boat!

CAPE May Light loomed in the distance like a lone sentinel of the night. At intervals of ten seconds its long penciled rays shot out over the ocean as the giant electric beacon oscillated in its rhythmic swing around the horizon. Dimly in the distance were reflected the lights along the boardwalk of the seashore resort, and far off toward the north the faint blur against the night skyline marked the spot where Wildwood nestled on the sands.

The Nemo rode at anchor on the smooth summer sea. To starboard lay a trim little United States destroyer that had stood guard for days over the submerged U-boat. Here and there on the surface of the sea could be seen the outlines of a submarine chaser, a fleet of them having come out to welcome the newly arrived salvage ship.

Mid-afternoon the Nemo had arrived from her home base in Long Island Sound and was awaiting now the morning to begin operations on the foundered German submarine. There had remained before sundown only a brief time for a superficial examination of the sea bottom, but in that time Jay Thacker and Dick Monaghan, crack divers of the Bridgeford Company, had donned diving armor and spent an hour under water.

Imagine the surprise of the navy officials when these two youths had returned to the deck to report they could find no trace of the lost U-boat!

"I don't quite understand this at all," remarked Lieutenant-Commander Wilberforce, U. S. N. He and Captain Austin were conferring together on the U. S. S. Monadnock, the destroyer.

"Our men declare positively that this is the identical spot where the U-boat was located by divers some time ago," explained the officer. "We have not been sending divers down these last few weeks since the department ordered us to wait until they sent salvage facilities. But we have stood guard here continually and can assure you absolutely that no foreign salvage corps has been working here."

Captain Austin ventured the opinion that the U-boat had been broken up by the shifting waters during a recent ten-day gale that had raged up and down the coast.

"No, I hardly think so," hazarded Commander Wilberforce. "When last our divers were down they reported the U-boat well above sea bottom. It's a mystery to me."

"Perhaps the German craft has been covered up with drifted sand," suggested Captain Austin.

Wilberforce thought that over for a moment.

"That hadn't occurred to me," he resumed after a moment. "There may be something to that. You see, we are just off the Delaware River breakwater and there are all kinds of cross-currents here."

For an hour or more the two officers discussed the project and collaborated on their plans for the morrow.

"I've got some pretty good divers with me," said Captain Austin as he made ready to return to the Nemo for the night. "I'll stack them against anything in the world. If they can't find that U-boat then nobody can find it."

"Good enough, I'm sure they'll do their best." Commander Wilberforce had thought well of Jay and Dick, and had so expressed himself during the afternoon as he saw the boys in action.

With the morning sun the boys were up and ready for the day's explorations. They were anxious to get down to business. And furthermore, they were anxious that one or the other should get the first assignment of the day. Weddigen was along, but Captain Austin had not ordered him into diving armor the previous afternoon, and the Brighton boys were hopeful that the task of searching for the U-boat was to be entrusted to them alone.

Jay was first to go over the side of the Nemo. The sea had looked calm and placid as a mountain lake as he started and he figured no difficulty in getting about over the bottom. But, as every diver knows, the sea is the most deceptive thing in the world. Stand on the shore on a quiet day and look out to sea over waters unruffled save for the roll of the surf. Everything lovely; yet, down deep, mighty forces heaving and tossing like a hidden monster seeking some prey to devour.

From hummock to hummock the young diver was tumbled over the submarine sandbars. First he would be knocked down and then as quickly stood up once more. At intervals he would be lifted off his feet and swirled along in the vortex of a deadly current. Then he would be slammed down hard again and pinned with such force against the ocean bed that it seemed he never would get to his feet again. Occasionally he found himself sprawled out on hands and knees like a creeping crustacean.

Under such circumstances search for the U-boat was next to impossible. Instead of the usual green radiance of the water Jay found himself in a deadly saffron light, at times almost opaque. Experience had taught him that that meant the sand was in motion. Light conditions, therefore, were not favorable for exploration, since the youth could not see very far in any direction. Peer about as he did between his many enforced flip-flops, he saw nothing of the U-boat, even though the navy men had said it was in these very waters and within a very narrow prescribed circle.

Presently, as he was swept helter-skelter along over the sand hummocks by the twisting waters, he brought up sharp against some object that projected out of the sand like a slim piling. Instinctively he flung out an arm as he was swept close to it. His arm struck with such a resounding whack that for the moment the limb felt numb.

"What in the name of sense is this?" he speculated, unable to see for a moment because of the swirling sand. His mind conjectured all manner of things.

Clinging tenaciously to his new-found support, Jay ran his hands up and down the protuberance. It was smooth and round like some cylindrical metal object. But what was it?

Soon there came a rift in the cloud of sand particles and the filtered sun's rays came down through the opulent green. In that moment Jay cleared the sand from the eyes of his helmet that he might scrutinize the object more clearly. Turning his gaze upward, he beheld the boxed lens glass of a periscope—the eye of the submarine!

"Great guns! here's the old U-boat buried to her eyelashes in the bottom of the sea!" ejaculated the diver, surprised and stunned at his discovery. There was no doubt of it; here was the periscopic pole of a submarine with its great eyes still intact. But what of the U-boat itself? Was it there under the sandy floor of the ocean? And by what queer prank of the tides had it come to be covered over?

In succession, these questions flitted through the mind of the lad as he further inspected his new find. Leaving it, he paced off first in one direction and then in another, keeping this up until he had run a radius in every direction from the periscope pole. But nowhere was there any trace of a ship's hull within a reasonable distance of that stranded ship's eye.

Jay was all excited. To think! He had located the lost submarine in such an extraordinary manner!

"I'll have to get out of here, though, and mighty quick," was his next thought as he began to feel that queer pain across the eyes and at the base of the brain that tells a diver he has had enough for one time of the deadly sea pressure.

In his excitement he gave his signal line a mighty jerk. Afterwards they told him he had signaled the emergency. And they had been awaiting the signal so long, thinking some mishap had come to Jay, that they yanked him up in jig time.

Jay was a sight when he came over the side of the Nemo again. For one thing he had stayed too long. His nose was bleeding profusely and his head was bruised and battered by the pummeling he had gotten down below in the embrace of that undertow. But when they got his helmet off and freshened him up with cold water and first aid restoratives he soon rallied again to his normal self.

And then he told them all about the U-boat in its sepulcher of sand with its periscope standing out like a gravestone.

"Guess you were right," admitted Commander Wilberforce as he turned to Captain Austin, recalling how the latter had suggested the previous night that the U-boat might have been covered over by drifted sand, set in motion by cross currents and undertows.

"And that being the case, I don't see that there is much that we can do here for the present," added the Bridgeford official. "It will be necessary for us to bring down our new salvage ship before we can do anything with that U-boat. Of course, we have facilities for digging into the bottom of the ocean just as land engineers employ the steam shovel to excavate a cut or a tunnel. What do you think?"

Commander Wilberforce heartily agreed and said he would go ashore at once to acquaint the department at Washington with the full facts and ask an authorization on behalf of the Bridgeford Company for the employment of their entire resources in exhuming the buried submarine. In the meanwhile the Nemo was to return to Bridgeford.

But if Commander Wilberforce and Captain Austin were through for the present, Diver Jay Thacker was not. He liked not at all the prospect of backing off at this stage of the game, leaving the U-boat possibly to be buried high over her periscope deeper and deeper until the new Jules Verne could get on the job from Bridgeford.

Jay was doing a tall lot of thinking. And he had formulated in his own mind a plan of action that he hoped to put into effect with the aid of Captain Austin. Not even taking his own chum into his confidence, Jay sought out the Nemo's chief executive and drew him below decks for a star-chamber session of his own making.

Patiently the captain heard Jay through, shaking his head negatively in disapproval of the lad's proposition.

"There's no use of your taking any such risks, and, besides, we'll come back here a little later with the Jules Verne and worm our way right into that U-boat."

But Jay was insistent.

"Please, Captain Austin, I'm sure I can get away with this and rescue those plans belonging to the government——"

Captain Austin, looking over Jay's shoulder, saw some one approaching and bade the young diver speak softly of the stolen plans.

The intruder was Weddigen! Jay eyed him keenly, trying to fathom whether the burly diver had overhead the remark. A cynical smile played at the corners of Carl's mouth and he smirked at Jay in a leering way.

"Well, all right, Thacker, I suppose you will have your own way," decided the ship's captain. "Go ahead, I'll wait the afternoon out for you; but, remember, we weigh anchor for home to-night."

Jay climbed on deck and prepared again to don his armor.

"Bring me a crowbar and that old mushroom anchor that lies up front in the forward compartment," he asked of one of the deckmen.

Dick was assisting his chum to get into his diving suit.

"What are you going to do this time?" asked Dick inquisitively.

"Well, I've got an idea and I want to see how it works out," replied Jay. "That freak undertow is doing some funny stunts and I think I can use it to suit my purposes. I'll let you know after I've had another look at that periscope pole."

Pretty soon Jay was over the side again and dangling in the water, carrying the crowbar in one hand and the mushroom anchor in the other. Instantly his feet touched bottom, he set off in the direction of the periscope and soon came upon it by intuitively guiding along the course that he knew would take him to the goal of his aspiration. The water was fairly clear and the undertow still setting strong along the ocean bed.

"Now we'll see," he murmured, as he set down the anchor within easy reach and took the crowbar, commencing to dig directly alongside the periscope pole. It is not easy thus to dig on the sandy bottom of the sea; one must go in sidewise with a due allowance for the currents instead of directly down.

Little by little the sand was dislodged and turned away. And so soon as it became loosened up and was stirred around the water dragged at it and skitted it away freakily, dissolving it into particles that filled all the sea round about the diver. Pretty soon Jay was the center of a veritable submarine sand tornado.

"Good enough; just what I wanted," he chuckled.

All at once as he was digging away the crowbar struck something hard. With a firm impact it brought up against a solid substance. The diver's own buoyancy and the swing of the rolling sea kept him from digging with much force, but pecking away with determination Jay soon accomplished his purpose, and that was to make a considerable excavation over the hard metallic substance that his crowbar had encountered.

"How do you do, Mr. Submarine," he laughed. For what he had encountered with his crowbar was nothing more or less than the top of the U-boat's conning tower!

Setting the anchor in the hole, he lashed the crowbar to his body again and gave the signal to be hoisted.

"See you in the morning," he called to the sunken submarine.