"Open the side window panel and turn on the searchlight!" The order came from Mr. Barr five minutes after the Peacemaker struck. Naturally enough, everyone on board was seriously alarmed; but in the face of danger the Boy Scouts took their example for action from the naval officer and the inventor. Although deadly pale, Mr. Barr kept his voice as cool as an icicle. Ensign Hargreaves, while fully realizing the danger, yet steeled himself to calmness; and both Rob and Merritt simulated the courage of their elders. Rob hastened to obey Mr. Barr's command. As its white rays pierced the gloomy depths of the ocean like a scimitar of light, all on board peered intently from the panel and strove to make out what it was that the diving boat had struck. At first nothing could be seen but the dark water with myriads of fish swarming about the bright light, which appeared to attract them as moths are attracted to an arc light. "Swing the light," ordered Mr. Barr; "bring it to bear a little more forward." Rob obeyed, and the ray of light swung in an arc through the obscurity outside of the Peacemaker. All at once, with a sharp exclamation, Rob stopped it. "Look! look!" he cried, pointing from the window. They looked and saw before them what appeared to be a steep acclivity, ribbed and rocky as a mountain side. It was against this submerged cliff that the Peacemaker had struck. "That submarine cliff appears to be of a soft formation," declared the ensign after a brief scrutiny; "our bow has driven into it." "Then we are doomed to remain here?" asked Merritt with a bit of a quiver in his voice. "Not necessarily. It's up to us now to do all we can to extricate ourselves." "But how?" The question came from Rob, whose voice, try as he would, persisted in faltering. It was an awful feeling to experience, this of being penned scores of fathoms beneath the ocean's surface in a diving boat. "Well, I have a plan in mind. It is a desperate one, but possibly it may work." "What do you propose to do?" This time it was the inventor who propounded "I don't care to say just yet," responded the naval officer. "Why not?" "Because it is a sort of forlorn hope that I don't care to advocate until absolute necessity arises." In the dire extremity into which they were plunged, not one of them cared just then to waste time by asking questions. Clearly Uncle Sam's officer was at the head of affairs. In silence they awaited his next word. "Rob, you must reverse the engines. Give them all the power they will stand. It's just possible that we may be able to back out without injury, although I fear that we are pretty deeply buried in this cliff." Rob, accompanied by Merritt, hastened to obey. Together the two boys entered the engine room, and Rob at once operated the mechanism which caused the Peacemaker to go backward. As he pulled over the lever and the engines began to whirr and buzz, everyone on the boat waited breathlessly for the result. But the Peacemaker did not move. Under the strain of her laboring engines the steel fabric shook and chattered, but not an inch did the diving boat budge. Rob and Merritt exchanged despairing glances. "Can't you get any more power out of her?" asked Merritt anxiously. Rob shook his head. "Not a bit more, old man. She's running at her utmost now." "Then we're stuck?" "It looks that way." "And we're doomed to die right here unless the nose of the boat can be got out of that cliff!" "Never say, 'die,' Merritt. We've done the best we can, and remember the ensign said that he had a plan if all else failed." "Yes, 'a forlorn hope' he called it." "In a case like this we can endure anything. Desperate situations require desperate means to solve them." As the young Scout leader spoke, Ensign Hargreaves burst into the engine room. The engines were still whirring and buzzing, and the hull of the Peacemaker was quivering under their powerful stress. "Have you developed every ounce of power they are capable of?" asked the naval officer. "Yes, sir," responded Rob respectfully; "they can't do another revolution." The officer looked anxious. "In that case, we shall have to resort to my forlorn hope," he said. "And what is that, sir?" asked Rob, his heart beating uncomfortably fast. "Come forward and you shall see." The ensign turned and swung out of the engine room, followed closely by two anxious boys, In the main cabin Mr. Barr, his face white and strained, sat on one of the leather divans. He looked up as the boys and the naval officer entered. "The engines won't back her out?" he asked in a voice harsh and rough from anxiety. "No. I'm sorry, Barr, but we're in a mighty bad fix. This submarine cliff must be of a sort of blue clay formation that is common off this coast. We have apparently driven into it so far that nothing short of an earthquake would dislodge us." "An earthquake?" "Yes; such a spasm of nature alone can set us free." "Then we are doomed to remain here." "Not of necessity; we have still a chance of escape." "What do you mean?" "That my plan offers a mere chance." "Then let us not delay in putting it into execution." "But it is a dangerous one!" "Never mind that. Nothing could be more serious than our present predicament." "Very well then, we will try out my idea. It's our last chance." "Our last chance!" The words sounded to the boys almost like a requiem. Plainly enough, whatever Ensign Hargreaves' plan might be, there were dangers attached to it, and no light dangers, either, to judge from his grave tones. Eagerly they awaited his next words. "My plan is nothing more nor less than this," he said; "I propose to create an earthquake." "To create an earthquake!" Mr. Barr echoed the words, staring at the ensign as if he thought he had gone suddenly insane. "Precisely. I intend to produce by artificial means an eruption which will destroy enough of this cliff to set us free, or else blow the Peacemaker herself into atoms." Mr. Barr buried his head in his hands. Skillful inventor and scientific expert though he was, the last words of the naval officer had sapped even his iron courage. "Is there no other way?" "No other way. It's a gamble for our lives." "What do you propose doing?" asked Mr. Barr in a strange, broken voice. "As I said, to create an artificial earthquake." "I am unable to follow you." "Then I'll make it clearer. In the torpedo compartment forward you have six Red Head torpedoes fully charged with gun cotton?" "Yes." The inventor was regarding the naval officer with intense interest now, and the boys also stood transfixed, their eyes riveted on the ensign as he unfolded his plan. "What I propose to do," he continued, "is to discharge from the side torpedo tubes two torpedoes. They will be aimed at the cliff and, of course, when they strike it, will explode." "But in that case our bow would be blown off also, and we should perish almost instantly," declared Mr. Barr. "Wait a minute. I didn't say we would discharge them directly at the cliff. What I propose doing is this: We will aim one on each side of the spot where our bow drove in, taking care to train the tubes so that the torpedoes will not strike too near." "Yes, the tubes are movable. That is one of the features of the Peacemaker." "Very well, then, they will be as easy to train in any desired direction as a rapid fire gun." "Exactly. But I never thought when I designed them that I might some day owe my life to that very feature." "Well, we are by no means out of the woods yet," responded the ensign drily. He led the way to the forward torpedo room. This was right in the bow of the boat and most of the space was occupied by odd-looking machinery. Like the other machinery on the Peacemaker, the derrick was operated by electricity. A pull of a lever and Mr. Barr had set its machinery in motion. The torpedoes were placed on racks so that it was a simple matter to secure them to the lifting chain of the derrick. First one and then another of the polished steel implements of deadly warfare were raised to the mouths of the torpedo tubes which projected into the chamber. Despite their immense weight, the torpedoes were placed within the tubes with no more difficulty than a sportsman experiences in shoving two cartridges into the breech of his gun. In ten minutes from the time the party entered the torpedo chamber, the steel implements of There followed a moment of suspense as the compressed air, with a hissing sound, rushed into the tubes. Mr. Barr, deadly pale but without a tremor in his voice, announced that all was ready. The ensign merely nodded and began to operate a worm gear which swung the tubes at an acuter angle to the body of the submarine vessel. "I think we are all right now," he said presently. "Very well," spoke the inventor, his hand on a lever, "when you say the word, I'll discharge the torpedoes." "You might as well do it right now," was the response. The inventor, with hands that shook, swung the lever back. There was a hissing sound and a slight tremor as the compressed air shot the torpedoes from the tubes. Less than a second later, simultaneously it seemed, the submarine was rocked and swayed by a terrific convulsion. The boys and their elders were thrown right and left with a force that almost knocked them senseless. It was but a few moments after the explosion of the two torpedoes that Ensign Hargreaves uttered a shout that thrilled them all. "We're rising!" he cried. "My plan succeeded after all!" "I think that we ought to give thanks to Providence," said Mr. Barr reverently. "As the ensign has said, the plan succeeded, but it was taking one chance in a thousand. Had that cliff not been shaken so as to release us, we might have perished miserably and left our fate a mystery." The boys were in the conning tower by the conclusion of Mr. Barr's words. The barograph showed them to be rising a hundred feet a minute. No words were exchanged between the two young Scouts, but each grasped the other's hand in a firm grip and gazed into the other's eyes. There was no necessity of speech. Both realized that they had passed through the gravest peril that even they had experienced in all their adventurous lives. When the Peacemaker reached the surface once more, the storm had subsided. With their hearts full of deep gratitude for the miraculous chance that had saved their lives, her occupants headed the speedy diving craft back for the island at top speed. The Peacemaker had been through the supreme test and had not been found lacking. "I tell you what, Barr," declared Ensign Hargreaves, as they neared the familiar island, "you have the most wonderful boat on earth, and "Thank you," said the inventor simply, extending his hand. |