A DIVE FOR SAFETY.

As Matt was the last one to lose his senses, so he was the first to recover. And here again his superior endurance must have scored in his favor.

Always in the pink of physical condition, and striving constantly to keep himself so, his powers of recuperation were quick to react and reassert themselves.

He sat up, dazed and bewildered, and was some moments in picking up the chain of events where it had been dropped.

By degrees he lived over the events that immediately preceded his lapse into unconsciousness, and thoughts of the treacherous Ah Sin brought him staggering to his feet.

The Grampus was yawing and tumbling about in the waves, completely at the mercy of wind and currents. Seizing the wheel, Matt brought the submarine to her course and lashed the wheel with his twisted handkerchief.

Pausing by the foot of the ladder he looked up into the conning tower. The hatch was open.

What had become of the Chinaman he asked himself. Had he, confident that the boat would be blown up, gained the deck and thrown himself into the sea? Matt had heard of fanatics of that sort—carrying out orders given by a higher power and then immolating themselves on the altar of what they supposed to be their duty.

The Japs were noted for self-sacrifices of that kind, and Ah Sin was not a Chinaman, but a little yellow man from the land of the mikado.

How long Matt had remained unconscious he had no means of knowing.

Resolved to discover what had become of the supposed Chinaman at all hazards, Matt climbed laboriously up the ladder. The cool, salt air, pouring down the hatch, served still further to revive him and bring back his strength.

At last, when he braced himself in the opening and was able to cast a sweeping glance over the waves, the sight unrolled before him brought a startled exclamation to his lips.

A cable's length from the submarine was a dory manned by smartly uniformed yellow sailors. Hove to, half a dozen fathoms beyond the dory, was the steamer with the black funnel and the red band, her port rail lined with figures that were evidently watching the Grampus. Between the dory and the submarine was a swimming figure, which Matt had little difficulty in recognizing as being that of Tolo, otherwise Ah Sin.

Tolo was swimming and looking behind, and the eyes of those in the dory were on the Grampus, the men at the oars turning their heads to look over their shoulders.

It seemed plain that they were expecting an explosion, and that they were hurrying to get Tolo out of the way of it.

Matt's blood ran cold as he thought of the heinous plot that had so nearly been carried out by the disguised Japanese. Policy was back of the murderous plan, but was it a policy dictated by a powerful nation, or merely by a set of misguided men, acting on their own accord?

The young motorist had no time to debate this point. A shout of consternation greeted his appearance at the conning-tower hatch. The officer in the dory spoke to his men, and all turned their faces the other way and bent their backs to the oars.

It flashed over Matt, in a twinkling, that the crew from the steamer were still of the opinion that they could destroy the submarine, and that they were hastening to get aboard the craft in order to carry out their nefarious designs.

Without losing a moment, Matt drew back into the tower and closed and barred the hatch. Lurching down the ladder he called desperately to his companions. Speake and Dick were sitting up, staring blankly at each other. When Matt appeared they fixed their bewildered eyes on him.

"Wake up!" cried Matt, springing to Dick and shaking him vigorously. "Get your wits together, Dick, and be quick about it."

"Keelhaul me!" mumbled Dick. "There was dope in that coffee."

"That's right," seconded Speake, rubbing a hand across his forehead.

"Never mind that now," went on Matt hurriedly. "Enemies are upon us! That steamer you saw in the periscope, Speake, is hove to a little way from us, and our motor is slowed until we have scarcely steerage-way. A boat is coming toward the Grampus, and we shall be boarded before you can say Jack Robinson. We've got to make a dive for safety. Rouse yourselves, both of you! To the motor, Dick! Speake, attend to the tanks—fill them for a twenty-foot submersion. You——"

Something struck against the side of the submarine, and a jar followed as of some one springing to the deck.

"There they are!" shouted Matt. "Below with you—quick!"

Speake and Dick got unsteadily to their feet. Matt's ominous words alarmed them, and did more than anything else to clear the fog from their minds. Making their way stumblingly through the door they lowered themselves down the hatch.

Several more ringing thumps on the deck proved to Matt that others had come aboard. Presently there was a banging on the hatch cover.

"Open!" cried a muffled voice with a queer foreign intonation. "Open so that we can talk!"

"Who are you?" roared Matt, his voice sounding like thunder in the confined space.

"Young Samurai, patriots of Nippon, Sons of the Rising Sun, Independent Protectors of the Kingdom. Open!"

Matt forced his way up the ladder again. Slant eyes were pressed against the lunettes and met his.

Already, however, water was entering the ballast tanks and the Grampus was beginning to settle.

"Our flag is the Stars and Stripes," yelled Matt, shaking his fist at the eyes on the other side of the thick glass, "and you dare not lay a hand on us! If your mikado knew what you were about——"

"Our mikado knows nothing," interrupted a voice. "We——"

The fact that the submarine was diving came suddenly home to those on the deck. Already the waves were creaming over the curved plates, drawn into a flurry by the suction as the boat went down.

The eyes disappeared from the lunettes, and the Japanese scrambled for their boat. Another moment and the conning tower was submerged and Matt could hear the waters gurgling over the hatch cover.

Sliding down to the periscope room he looked into the periscope. Some of the sailors were in the water, and others, in the boat, were desperately busy getting them aboard. For a moment only Matt was able to use the periscope, and then the waters closed about the ball, the valves protecting the ball from an inrush of water closed, and the Grampus was more than fifteen feet down.

"Twenty feet, matey!" came the voice of Dick.

"That will do, Speake," called Matt.

The tanks were closed.

"Drive her ahead, Dick!" cried Matt.

The motor was speeded up and the Grampus hustled onward below the surface. While Matt unlashed the wheel and brought the boat more directly into her course, a loud boom and a splash were heard.

"What's that?" demanded Speake.

"The steamer is firing at us," answered Matt.

"Let 'em shoot," laughed Dick. "A heap of good it will do them to drop shot into the sea."

"How's Gaines, Dick?"

"Coming along full and by, forty knots. He's sitting up and beginning to take notice."

"How about Clackett, Speake?"

"He jest asked me to tell him where he was," replied Speake, "so I guess he'll soon be able to take hold."

"Good! We're coming out of this a whole lot better than I had dared to hope."

"Dot's righdt," spoke up Carl, coming suddenly to a sitting posture.

"How do you feel, old chap?" asked Matt.

"I peen lying dere on my pack trying to guess id oudt," Carl answered.

"That's about the way I stack up, Mr. King," said Glennie, turning over on his side so he could face Matt. "Where are we?"

"We're twenty feet down and headed for the delta of the Amazon, Mr. Glennie."

"Didn't you lose consciousness, like the rest of us?"

"Yes; but I wasn't out of my head so long. I was the last to go and the first to come to."

"How do you account for that?"

Glennie sat up on the locker, as he put the question, and began rubbing his head.

"I didn't drink so much of that bitter coffee as the rest of you did," replied Matt.

"That's right," muttered Glennie; "I was forgetting about the coffee. It was drugged—it must have been."

"Yah, so helup me!" growled Carl. "Der shink vas oop to some funny pitzness, und he has peen efer since he come apoardt der poat. Shinks iss pad meticine, anyvays. Ve ought to haf droon him oferpoard on cheneral brinciples."

"Where's Ah Sin now?" queried Glennie, looking around the room expectantly.

"The last I saw of him," said Matt, "he was in the water swimming toward a small boat."

Glennie started to his feet, astounded.

"In the water?" he echoed. "Do you mean to say you allowed the scoundrel to get away, Mr. King? And all the time you knew just how much his presence meant to me!"

Matt gazed fixedly at the ensign.

"Your head must still be troubled with that dope the supposed Chinaman put in the coffee," said he calmly. "It was lucky that I was able to do what I did, and, as for the Chinaman getting away, I could no more help that than any of the rest of you. But it was a lucky thing for us that he did get away, I can tell you that."

"Vat pitzness you got finding some fault mit Motor Matt?" snapped Carl, making a truculent move in Glennie's direction. "You vas a bassencher—don'd forged dot—und Matt vas der skipper. Ve ought to call him Gaptain, only he von't allow id; but, all der same, he iss der gaptain oof der poat, und you vill keep some shdillness mit yourseluf oder I vill pat you on der pack mit mein fist. Yah, so, Misder Glennie!"

"That will do, Carl," said Matt. "Draw back into your shell now, and keep some stillness yourself. I can handle my own end with Mr. Glennie."

Carl flung off to the other side of the room, tramping heavily to show his impatience and disgust.

"I presume," said the ensign reflectively, "that you did the best you could, Mr. King, so I have no fault to find with you. But you understand that Ah Sin was my only hope for locating those important papers in Para."

Matt stared, wondering if Glennie had forgotten the discovery he had made just before he had lapsed into unconsciousness.

"I had a mighty queer dream about that Chinaman," pursued Glennie. "I thought you had a fight with him, Matt, and that, during the scuffle, his old slouch hat came off, and the queue along with it. And I was under the impression that Ah Sin wasn't a Chinaman at all, but Tolo, that rascally Jap."

"That wasn't a dream, Mr. Glennie," answered Matt, "but is literally what took place."

"Is that a fact?" cried the ensign.

"Look ad here vonce!" called Carl.

He had picked up the slouch hat and the attached queue and placed them on his head.

"Great Moses!" muttered Glennie, reeling back against the wall. "How I've been fooled! And I never recognized the scoundrel in his chink make-up! Well, I guess I deserve all the bad luck that's coming my way. I've been a dunderhead ever since the Seminole dropped me in La Guayra."

"Whoosh!" exclaimed Carl, disgustedly, pulling off the hat and pigtail and throwing them into the locker. "I don'd like der shmell oof der t'ings," and he dropped the locker lid and turned away. "Vat's dis, hey?" he inquired, picking up the bomb.