A few moments later Rawlins appeared with Smernoff close behind him.

“Gone!” Rawlins announced before a question could be asked. “Cleared out bag and baggage. We went over every inch of the Cay and there’s not a living soul on it. Just too late.”

“Jove, that’s too bad!” exclaimed Mr. Henderson. “Looks as if they’re bound to be a jump ahead of us. Lord alone knows where they’ve gone.”

“You’re dead wrong there!” declared Rawlins. “The Lord’s not the only one knows. We know.”

The others leaped to their feet. “Are you serious?” cried Mr. Pauling, hardly able to believe Rawlins’ statements. “What do you mean by that, Rawlins?”

“Where are they?” demanded Mr. Henderson. “How do you know?”

“You bet I’m serious,” declared Rawlins. “Heard ’em talking. Last of ’em was just leaving and I had one devil of a time stopping old Smernoff from running amuck and doing up the bunch single-handed. They’ve gone over to Santo Domingo where the Grand Panjandrum stops.”

“Well, for Heaven’s sake, begin at the beginning and tell us what happened,” cried Mr. Pauling. “First you announce they’ve all gone and then you talk about hearing them and knowing their plans. Make a sensible consecutive story of it, Rawlins.”

“All right,” grinned the diver, seating himself. “We got ashore all right and I called the boys and heard them—say you must have been shouting, Tom—and then we took off the suits, tucked ’em out of sight among the brush and started overland, Smernoff leading. Found a nice spot overlooking the beach and there was a bunch of men standing by a pile of dunnage and jabbering away to beat the band. Old Smernoff wanted to butt right in and clean up the crowd, but I managed to stop him. Thought he’d spoil the game by yelling or something. Well, after I’d got him quieted down we sneaked in close—they were so blamed busy gassing away they wouldn’t have seen us if we’d walked in and said ‘how-de-do.’ Got close enough so Smernoff could understand them and told him not to try to translate, but just to take it all in and tell me later. I thought at first of coming back and reporting, but I could see they were just ready to clear out and knew they’d be gone before we could get over here and back and decided the talk was more important so hung on. Pretty soon up bobs their sub—I could tell her by that smashed conning tower—and a boat comes ashore and takes off the bunch. Then the sub clears out and we are alone.”

“Well, what did Smernoff tell you?” demanded Mr. Henderson as Rawlins concluded.

“I was coming to that,” went on the diver. “There were so many talking at once he didn’t get it all, but he got enough. He says they had word this morning or this afternoon—he isn’t sure which—that their sub had been attacked and was being followed by a destroyer, and a sub, but that the sub—meaning us—had been done for. And they were talking a lot about him—I expect he was so busy listening to that part he couldn’t get all the rest—swearing vengeance on him for betraying them. They knew about his getting away and doing up a few ‘reds’ in New York—though how the dickens they got the news beats me, and one of the men from the sub—he’d come ashore in a diving suit to see if the coast was clear—was telling them how Smernoff and his mate had betrayed the sub in the East River and the narrow escape they’d had. Funny how they got the idea old Smernoff did that when really they deserted him. Anyhow they were mad as hornets when their nest’s been poked by a kid and at the same time they didn’t dare wait for the destroyer to come up, so all hands decided to pack up and go over to Santo Domingo. It seems they’ve a place all ready over there close to the big chief’s and had been planning to move for some time. Now, just where that is I don’t know, but Smernoff says they talked about a cave and I heard one of ’em say something about CaÑa Honda. Over CaÑa Honda way there are lots of caves so I’ve got a hunch the whole shooting match are beating it for over that way.”

“You’ve done a good night’s work, Rawlins!” cried Mr. Pauling. “You did quite right in listening rather than notifying us. All we wanted of this crowd was information—it’s the head of the gang we’re after—and we’ve got what we want, or nearly what we want—without capturing or alarming them, which is a big point. Always keep the other fellow guessing in this game is a good thing to remember—let him think he’s safe and he’ll be less careful. I imagine you are right about the locality, your hunches have proved very accurate so far, so let us get under way for CaÑa Honda.”

“No hurry,” declared Rawlins. “Those chaps won’t be over there until morning and I don’t want to take any chances of bumping into them or a reef at night. We can get started and loaf along a little later, but we want to be dead careful or they’ll hear us. They think we’re at the bottom of the Caribbean so we’ll let ’em keep on thinking so. If they are at CaÑa Honda we won’t have much trouble finding them. We can either pick them up by radio or spot them by smoke. They can’t cook without fire and where there’s fire there’s smoke. My plan would be to wait until nearly daylight and then start and take it easy and submerge before we get in sight of CaÑa Honda. Then slip in, find a good hiding place and do our hunting in small boats or afoot after dark. A sub’s a mighty poor sort of thing to go moseying around with. If we locate them we can slip off, notify Disbrow and corral the whole bunch.”

For a few moments Mr. Pauling was silent, thinking deeply.

“Yes,” he assented at last. “That will be the best plan. No use in rushing matters to such an extent that we overdo it. And I quite agree with you in regard to tracing them. As you say, a submarine is too clumsy and large a craft for scouting—it’s too easily seen or heard.”

Everything being thus arranged, the submarine was raised to the surface, anchored securely and the occupants retired. The boys, however, got little sleep, for they were nervous and excited and filled with expectation of thrilling adventures to come.

As soon as the first faint streaks of dawn showed upon the horizon, the anchor was hauled in and, swinging her bow towards the dim, black bulk that marked the mountains of Santo Domingo to the westward, the submarine slipped silently from Trade Wind Cay.

Hour after hour they moved steadily across the calm blue sea and as they drew ever nearer to the big island the boys gazed upon it with wonder. They had never dreamed that an island could be so large. They had imagined, from the tiny dot that represented Santo Domingo in their geographies, that it would be a low, flat spot somewhat like the Bahamas, but a little larger, and now before them, they saw what appeared to be a continent. As far as eye could see on either hand the forest-covered hills stretched away. Inland and up from the shores rose tier after tier of mountains, the farthest nearly two miles in height and half-hidden in clouds, and between them were immense valleys, deep ravines and wide plateaus. And everywhere, from sea to topmost mountain peaks, the vivid green of forest and jungle, broken only by a few isolated patches of light-green sugar cane upon the lower hill slopes or in the valleys.

“Jiminy!” exclaimed Tom. “That is an island!”

“I’ll say ’tis!” agreed Rawlins. “Mighty fine one too.”

“It’s beautiful—but awfully wild-looking,” declared Frank. “Is it full of Indians and wild animals?”

Rawlins laughed heartily. “Wildest animals are the natives,” he assured them, “and the old Spaniards killed off the last poor Indian over two hundred years ago.” Then, a moment later, he continued: “By the way, speaking of Spaniards, that old galleon I told you about is right over yonder. See that line of reefs? Well, she’s just on the outer edge of those in about 20 to 25 fathoms.”

“Oh, Gosh! why won’t Dad let us stop and go down to it?” cried Tom.

“Say, perhaps he will!” exclaimed Frank jubilantly. “He wouldn’t before, but now he’s in no hurry—they can’t go in shore until dark—and I’ll bet he’d just as lief wait out here as anywhere else. Let’s ask him.”

At first Mr. Pauling refused to listen to the boys’ pleading, but when Rawlins pointed out that they had time to kill and added that he personally would like to have a look at the old wreck, Tom’s father yielded.

“Very well then,” he agreed, “but don’t waste any time. We’ll expect you to bring up a fortune, Rawlins. Let us know when you go down so we can see the fun.”

“And for heaven’s sake take care of yourself,” added Mr. Henderson. “If anything happens to you where will we be?”

“Oh, I’ll be safe enough,” laughed Rawlins. “I’m safer under water than on top any day.”

“Come on then!” cried Tom, “let’s get our suits ready.”

“No, boys, you’re not going down here,” declared Rawlins. “Too deep.”

“Oh, confound it all!” cried Frank. “Everything has to be spoiled. What’s the use if we can’t go down to the old wreck?”

“You can look through the underseas ports and watch me,” Rawlins reminded them. “Honest, I’m sorry you’re disappointed, but this is real diving. I’ll have to use my regulation suit here too. Too deep for those self-contained ones.”

For a time the disappointed boys sulked, but presently, realizing that there were limits to what they could expect to do and also realizing that they were more than fortunate to be able to watch Rawlins as he investigated the old galleon, their high spirits returned and they became as interested, excited and enthusiastic as ever.

The submarine was now close to the spot where Rawlins stated the wreck had been before and he busied himself getting out his suit, oiling and testing the air pump and making everything ready while the submarine slowed down and came to a stop.

“It’s a heap easier now—with a submarine,” said Rawlins, as he slid back the heavy metal cover to the thick glass port. “We can look about a bit and locate the wreck before I go down. Last time it took us nearly a month to find it. You see, it’s too deep to see bottom from the surface and—look here, boys—ever see anything prettier than that?”

The boys crowded to the small port and stared out It was like the sea-gardens at Nassau multiplied and glorified a thousandfold. The submarine was now submerged and floating at a slight angle a few fathoms above the bottom and her powerful electric lights, such as Rawlins used in his sub-sea photography, were casting a brilliant beam of soft greenish light upon the ocean floor and the marvelous growths which covered it. The boys, dry and safe within the submarine, could scarcely believe they actually were gazing at the bottom of the sea. It was more like some strange and marvelous painting or, as Tom said, like the models on exhibition in the American Museum. It was all unreal, weird, beautiful, unbelievable. On all sides was a dim, green void, with half-revealed forms, shadowy outlines and indistinct objects showing through it as through a heavy green curtain, while the beam of light, stabbing through the water gave the effect of the curtain being drawn aside to disclose the beauties and wonders behind it. Back and forth in this light clear space flitted gaudy fishes; fishes of grotesque form; fishes with long, trailing opalescent-hued fins; fishes large and fishes small; and once the boys cried out in momentary alarm and drew quickly back from the glass as an ugly hammer-headed shark, six feet or more in length, bumped his clumsy-looking head against the port.

“Gosh! Mr. Rawlins, aren’t you afraid to go down among those fellows?” cried Tom.

“Not in the least,” Rawlins assured him. “They won’t touch a man in a diving suit—come up and rub their backs against him or stare at him, but never anything else. They’re a blamed nuisance at times—get in a man’s way, but we can drive ’em off by hitting them. Look, there’s a moray!”

As he spoke, an immense greenish, snake-like eel wriggled past so closely the boys could see his throbbing gills.

“They’re worse than sharks,” Rawlins told them. “Bite anything and savage as tigers. Good to eat though.”

But the boys found the other wonders and beauties even more interesting than the fishes. Gigantic cup-shaped sponges grew upwards for six or seven feet. Immense sea-fans and sea-plumes formed a forest that might have been of futuristic palms. Huge orange, green and chocolate domes of brain corals were piled like titanic many-colored fruits. There were great toadstool-like mushroom corals of lavender, pink and yellow and everywhere, above all, the wide-branching, tree-like madrepores or stag-horn corals of dull fawn-brown. Back and forth among this forest under the sea darted schools of tiny jewel-like fishes; great pink conchs crawled slowly about; a little flock of butterfly squids shot past, gleaming like bits of burnished metal in the light; ugly long-legged giant spider crabs scuttled into their shelters among the corals and everywhere the ocean’s floor was dotted with huge starfishes, brilliant sponges, big black, sea-cucumbers and crabs and shells by hundreds.

“Jove, it’s the most wonderful sight I’ve ever seen!” declared Mr. Henderson who, with Mr. Pauling, was also gazing at this wonderland beneath the sea.

“Yes, simply marvelous!” agreed the other. “Boys, I’m mighty glad I gave in. I wouldn’t have missed this for anything. No wonder you’re fascinated by a diver’s life, Rawlins!”

“But I want to see that wreck!” cried Tom. “Do you suppose it’s gone?”

“Ought to be pretty close to it by now,” said Rawlins. “Yes, there ’tis! See it, boys? Look, over beyond that big bunch of sea-fans!”

The boys strained their eyes in the direction Rawlins pointed, but could see nothing that even remotely resembled a wreck.

“No, I can’t see it,” admitted Tom, at last.

“Neither can I,” said Frank.

“Why it’s plain as can be,” declared Rawlins. “Can’t miss it.” Then, an idea occurring to him, he burst into a hearty laugh. “Why, I suppose you’re looking for a ship!” he cried. “Masts and stern and rails and all! Nothing like that, boys. This old hooker’s been down here a couple of hundred years and more. She’s just a mass of coral now. See that sort of mound there—that one with that lop-sided stag-horn coral growing out of one side?”

“Oh, yes, I see that,” declared Tom. “Is that the wreck?”

“I’ll say ’tis,” Rawlins assured him. “Well, we’re near enough. Too bad we can’t let the old sub down to the bottom, but it’s too rough. I guess she’ll be pretty steady here though—isn’t any current or those sea-rods would be waving.”

“But I don’t understand how you can go down with life-lines and things when the submarine is under water,” said Frank. “I thought we’d have to be on the surface.”

“And I don’t see why it makes any difference about the suits, no matter how deep it is,” added Tom.

“I don’t use life-lines and ‘things’ when I’m diving from a sub,” explained Rawlins. “In the first place they’re no use. When a fellow goes down from the surface he can’t be seen and so he has to have a signal line and a rope for hauling him up. But down here I can come back to the sub whenever I please and just climb into the air-lock on the ladder, and if I want to signal I can do it without any line—just wave my hands—as you can see me all the time. The airhose runs from a connection in the air-lock and I carry a light line along just as a safeguard and have a man in the air-lock holding it. Of course I could go down in one of the self-contained suits, but the pressure’s pretty big down here and it’s no fun working in one of them when the pressure outside is just about the limit of what I can get with the oxygen generators. It’s different with the air—I don’t have to bother with that—the pump looks after it.”

“Oh, I understand,” declared Frank, “but who’s going to tend the line for you?”

“Sam,” replied Rawlins. “He’s worked with me before and he’s a wonderful diver and swimmer. You see the pressure in the air-lock is the same or even a little more than outside and it takes a chap who’s used to deep-sea diving to stand that. Sam could go down here without a suit—but not for long of course—pressure’s too great. Well, so long. Keep your eyes on the wreck and you’ll see me out there among the fishes in a minute.”

Rawlins entered the air-lock with Sam and presently the boys saw him—a grotesque, clumsy figure in the baggy diving suit and big round helmet—laboriously making his way along the bottom almost below them. Turning, he waved his hand reassuringly and then resumed his way towards the coral-encrusted wreck.

“Doesn’t he look funny!” cried Tom, “leaning way forwards and half swimming along, and aren’t those bubbles coming up from his escape-valve pretty? Say, it must be fun to be way down there. Gosh, I wish we could have gone!”

“It takes years of practice to enable a man to stand that pressure,” his father informed him, “and even expert professional divers cannot keep it up long. If you boys should go down here you’d probably be terribly injured—your ear drums burst and perhaps your eyes ruptured. A diver begins in shoal water and gradually goes deeper and deeper and Rawlins has been at it since he was a youngster.”

“Yes,” commented Mr. Henderson, “and some men never can dive. Divers are born not made.”

“Well it’s the next best thing to be able to watch him,” said Frank philosophically. “Oh, look, Tom, he’s nearly at the wreck!”

Rawlins was, as Frank said, close to the mound of coral and sea-growth that he had told the boys was the wreck of the old galleon and a moment later they saw him stoop and begin working with the heavy crowbar he carried.

Breathessly the boys watched, thrilled with the idea of thus seeing a deep-sea diver at work and speculating on whether he would find treasure. Then they saw Rawlins suddenly start back, almost losing his balance and in recovering himself the crowbar dropped to the ocean’s floor. The next instant Tom uttered a frightened, horrified cry. From among the mass of corals a long, snake-like object had shot forth and had whipped itself around Rawlins’ body like a living rope. They saw Rawlins grasp it, strain at it, and then, before the white-faced, terrified watchers in the submarine fully realized what was taking place, another and another of the livid, serpent-like things were writhing and coiling about the diver.

“It’s an octopus!” cried Mr. Pauling.

“Oh, oh! He’ll be killed!” screamed Frank. “Oh, isn’t it terrible?”

But they were helpless, powerless to aid. All they could do was to gaze fascinated and terror-stricken at the awful tragedy, the fearful struggle taking place there at the bottom of the sea before their very eyes.

And now they could see the loathsome creature itself. Its great pulpy body, now pink, now blue, now green; its huge, lusterless, unwinking eyes—an enormous creature whose sucker-clad tentacles encircled Rawlins in a grip of steel, binding his signal line and making it useless, reaching about as if to grasp the air-hose, swaying like serpents about to strike before his helmet. Madly the diver was fighting for his life, bracing himself against the corals, grappling with the slimy tentacles, wrenching his hands and arms free. Then the terrified, breathless watchers gazing at the nightmare-like scene saw Rawlins lift his arm and through the water they saw the blade of his sheath knife flashing in the beam of light. Again and again he brought it slashing down, hacking, stabbing at the clinging tentacles. Bits of the writhing flesh dropped off at the blows and a cloud of inky water that shot from the repulsive creature’s syphon for a moment obscured the scene. But the savage blows, the slashing cuts, the lopped-off tentacles seemed not to affect the giant devil fish in the least and slowly, steadily, inexorably Rawlins was being drawn closer and closer to the cruel eyes, the soft toad like body and the wicked, parrot-like beak.

The boys screamed aloud, the men muttered under their breath. Members of the crew, attracted by the frightened cries, rushed to the port and peered horrified at the terrible scene being enacted under the sea.

Rawlins’ fate seemed sealed, he was now bound fast by the eight tentacles, even the hand with the knife was wrapped around by the relentless, sucker-armed things.

And then, from below the submarine, a strange shape darted through the water—a dark form which, for an instant, the boys took for some huge fish.

Straight towards the struggling diver it sped and as the light fell upon it the boys shouted and yelled, the men cheered, for it was no fish but a man! A man, naked and black, swimming at utmost speed—Sam the negro hurrying to Rawlins’ aid!

Hardly had those at the ports realized it was Sam before he was at the scene of battle. For a brief instant he poised motionless above the diver and his antagonist and then, quickly and gracefully as a seal, he plunged straight down at the octopus. There was a flash of steel in the light, the water was blackened with the polyp’s ink. Through the thick, murky, discolored water only confused, rapidly moving forms were visible and scarcely breathing, those within the submarine gazed and waited. Would Sam be able to kill the creature? Could he hold out long enough to win the battle? Could he free Rawlins?

Then as the water cleared and the light once more penetrated the depths, rousing cheers went up from the watchers, they laughed hysterically, tears rolled down their cheeks, for slowly, painfully but surely, Sam was coming back, while behind him, half dragging himself along, but apparently uninjured, was Rawlins. Upon the bottom where he had stood a shapeless squirming, pulpy mass was all that remained of the octopus and about it, swarmed voracious fishes snapping at the dying, flaccid tentacles. The battle was over. Rawlins was safe. Sam had won. Naked, armed only with a knife, he had attacked the monster of the sea, had literally hacked it to bits and had returned unharmed.

“Gosh!” cried Tom. “Gosh!” and unable to say another word, utterly overcome, he slumped down upon a cushioned seat faint from the strain he had undergone.

Frank swayed unsteadily and sank down beside his chum while Mr. Pauling and the others wiped their wet brows, licked their dry lips and grasped one another’s hands in silent thanksgiving, too overcome to speak.