The depth gauge was dropping steadily as the S-18 plunged downward through the black waters. From Commander Ford on down, everyone was tense. This was the big test. If anything went wrong—

But they couldn’t think of that, that is, no one except Tim who had nothing else to do.

“Ease off on the diving rudders,” snapped Commander Ford. “We’re almost down.”

“How’s the bottom?” asked George Gadd.

“Charts show it to be good and firm. We’ll just touch and then start up again.”

The depth gauge showed 205 feet when there was a gentle scraping sound and the S-18 came to rest on the bottom of the sound. Beads of water were standing all over the interior of the glistening white hull for the pressure at that depth was tremendous.

Commander Ford left his post and made a thorough tour of the submarine. When he returned he was obviously elated.

“Everything’s holding fine,” he said. “Now we’ll get ready to return to the surface.”

Orders flew rapidly. The diving planes were readjusted and Forman Gay and Erich Gaunt stood ready to blow the ballast from the diving tanks and lighten the sub for the rise to the surface.

“Blow the tanks,” ordered the Commander.

Compressed air hissed through the high pressure lines and Tim knew that despite the pressure of the water at that depth the air was blowing the ballast from the tanks. In a moment or two the S-18 would quiver, come to life, and start the upward ascent.

Commander Ford was watching the gauges intently. There was no movement of the S-18 and he turned toward Gay and Gaunt.

“We’re giving the tanks all we’ve got,” said Gaunt. “There’s 1,500 pounds of air pressure pushing that water out.”

“Hold it for a minute,” ordered Ford as Charlie Gill, the chief diver, stumbled into the room.

Charlie’s face was white, strained.

“We’re stuck, chief, we’re stuck. This bottom is as soft as a mud pie and the current has rammed us against the side of an old derelict. We’re settling deeper into the stuff every minute.”

“Stand by your posts,” cried the Commander. Grabbing Gill by the shoulder, he hurried him forward. Tim, who had no duty to attend, followed them into the diving compartment where a special quartz window to observe diving operations had been placed. A powerful searchlight had been turned on by Gill and it revealed the trap into which the S-18 had settled. They were tight against the slime-encrusted hull of an old barge, probably a garbage scow used in hauling the refuse from New York City.

“That also explains the soft bottom,” said Ford. “They’ve been dumping garbage out here.”

“It may make garbage of us,” said Gill bitterly.

“Can you get into your diving outfit and get outside and place a bomb?” asked the Commander.

“Not at this depth. I’ve got to be in the diving compartment and come down gradually. The pressure would break me in two if I walked out there now.”

“Then how about a bomb?”

“We could get that outside, but it’s hard to tell where it will go off. If it’s too close to the hull, it might crush us and you know the answer to that.”

Commander Ford nodded. “We’ll try it again.”

He returned to the control room where the motors were raced first ahead and then in reverse, but the S-18 failed to rise out of the muck and instead seemed to be burrowing its way further into the soft stuff.

Commander Ford ordered the motors cut out and called the crew into the control room.

“We’re in a jam,” he said. “You know as well as I do that we can’t expect help from the surface in time to do us any good. If we escape we’ve got to do it ourselves and there’s only one way. That’s by using one of the special depth bombs and hoping it will jar us loose. There’s a chance the explosion may crush our own hull, but that’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

“Let’s get it over with,” put in the chief electrician. “I was on the bottom of the English channel for twelve hours in a sub during the war and this waiting is awful.”

The rest of the crew voiced the sentiments of the chief electrician. Pat was placed in charge of the control room while Commander Ford and Charlie Gill and Russ Graham, the divers, and Joe Gartner, the torpedo man and gunner, went ahead to make preparations to explode the bomb.

The explosive was dangerous stuff and none of them relished handling it, but in it they saw their one chance of escape. The bomb was in a special steel case with a small aperture in which the timing device was located. The fuse was set for five minutes and the bomb placed in the diving chamber.

Tim’s nerves felt shaky. The bomb was going now. In just five minutes the deadly blast would go off. If they didn’t get it out of the diving chamber and against the derelict, there wouldn’t be a ghost of a chance for them.

But Charlie Gill and Russ Graham were versatile men. They had been in plenty of tight places before. Working quickly and surely, they opened the outer door of the diving chamber. At that depth a terrific spray of water shot into the inner chamber and the bomb bobbed from side to side. Then the force of the water pushed it outside the hull of the submarine. In the glow from the searchlight they saw the bomb drift away from the side of the submarine. The same current which was holding the S-18 fast against the derelict was driving the bomb against it.

Commander Ford, watch in hand, was counting the seconds.

“Better close the outer door of the diving compartment,” he told Charlie Gill. “There’s little more than a minute left.”

The Commander of the S-18 hurried back to the control room.

“On the alert,” he told the men. “Everyone be ready for double quick action. There’s thirty seconds left before the bomb explodes.” Tim glanced around the room. Erich Gaunt and Forman Gay were bent over the levers which controlled the ballast tanks. Pat was tense at the diving rudders while back in the motor room George Gadd stood by to help the chief electrician. The crew of the S-18 was ready.

The flying reporter was fascinated as the second hand of his own watch ticked off the precious seconds. It might be ticking life and death for all aboard the S-18, 205 feet below the surface of the sound.

Ten, seven, five, three seconds left.

A muffled explosion shook the hull of the S-18.

“Motors full ahead!” shouted Commander Ford.

The powerful electrics leaped into action. The steel deck beneath them quivered.

They were moving! It was slow at first, but the S-18 was shaking the slime of the bottom off its hull.

Then, with a sickening leap, they shot upward, motors on full, diving planes at the sharpest angle.

Men tumbled around in the control room like dry leaves before an autumn gale. The S-18, out of control, was shooting toward the surface.

Pat managed to scramble to his feet and seized the wheel which controlled the forward diving rudders. With a quick twist he lessened the sharp angle of their ascent.

Before the other men could crawl back to their stations, the grey nose of the submarine shot above the surface of the sound. It must have risen ten feet out of water, then as the rest of the sub came to the surface, slapped back into the water with a resounding crash. Everyone aboard was jarred by the shock.

“Tanks clear of water, diving planes normal?” Questions shot from the lips of Commander Ford.

Before the main hatch was opened and the sunlight streamed in, he made sure that the S-18 had not been seriously damaged by its sudden rise. In spite of the great pressure, not a seam in the hull had been opened and the crew scrambled out on deck for a breath of fresh air.

The seaplane was still circling overhead and with a shock Tim realized they had been on the bottom less than half an hour. It had seemed a lifetime.

To the veteran submarine men the harrowing experience on the bottom of the sound seemed all in the day’s work, but to Tim it was an incident he would remember all the rest of his life.

“No more garbage scows for mine,” grinned Pat. “That was a little too close for comfort.”

“I’d just as soon fly down to the Caribbean,” said Tim as he watched the seaplane gracefully circling overhead.

Commander Ford joined them.

“After that test there’s no question about the seaworthiness of the S-18. We’re putting back to the Laidlaw yard at once. We’ll start south sometime tomorrow.”

That was news and Tim went below and dictated a story to Ike Green, who sent it to the Journal station. It was the first story sent directly from the S-18.

That night when they were back in the yard, a truck lumbered through the main gate, a winch on the dock clattered noisily and a long, cigar-shaped object came slowly down. A forward hatch was opened and the torpedo locked securely in its rack. After that a case of shells for the four-inch gun and three machine guns and a half dozen automatic rifles and sixteen revolvers with plenty of ammunition were lowered from the dock.

“We’re going to be something of a floating arsenal,” chuckled Pat. “Believe me, if we get in a jam old Joe Gartner is a handy man with the four-inch gun.”

“What about Sladek and his expedition?” Tim asked.

“Commander Ford told me this afternoon they were ready to sail at a moment’s notice. We’ll be slipping away tomorrow night which may cause them a little trouble in following us.”

The next day Tim went to the Sea King factory on Long Island and made sure his plane was ready. Then he wrote the final stories of plans for the departure and sent them to both the New York Journal and the News at home, with release dates for the next day, when they would be well out to sea and off the Jersey coast.

A subdued air of excitement gripped the crew of the S-18. This was the big night. Before midnight they would be headed down the East river, bound for the open sea and the start of the big adventure.