"Look over there, sir," muttered Jack, holding the searchlight ray
steadily on an object he believed he saw. "Don't you make out, sir,
bobbing up and down when the waves part, what looks like the stump of
the broken-off mast of a vessel submerged? Is it a death-dealing
derelict in the very path of coastwise navigation!"
"By Jove, yes!" gasped Lieutenant Danvers, hoarsely. "Your eyes are
sharp, Benson, and your judgment sound. That, then, was what we
struck on--the mast-stump of a water-logged, sunken derelict! If our
underhull plates are sprung, down we go to the bottom!"
They waited, in dreadful anxiety, for the report of Eph from the region
of the keel plates.
They were far out to sea, and a submarine cannot carry a lifeboat!
CHAPTER IV
A SUBMARINE'S REVENGE
All now waited on Eph's word during the next few moments.
If the "Hastings," striking on that stub of a submerged mast, had had
her plates so badly sprang that pumping would not drive out the water
as fast as it came in, then this newest of the submarines was doomed
to go to the bottom.
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