Then all at once a sharp cry rang from a boat off to the right, a cry taken up and echoed all along the line. The paddles ceased to ply; the canoes now drifted idly forward, their wakes trailing out behind in long "slicks" of greasy blackness flecked with sparkles from the reflected light of all those many torches. Another word of command; the boatmen slowed their craft. "Drop the iron here, son, and drag the bottom," said the patriarch. "Good!" answered Stern, thrilled with excitement and wonder. He pitched the dredge into the jetty sea. It sank silently as he payed out the cable. At a depth he estimated--from the amount of cable still left in the boat--as about thirty fathoms, it struck bottom. He let out another five fathoms. "All right, father!" he exclaimed sharply. "Tell our boatmen to give way!" The old man translated the order: "Ghaa vrouaad, m'yaun!" (Go forward, men.) The paddles dipped again and Stern's canoe moved silently over the inky surface. Every sense alert, the engineer at the gunwale held the cable. For a few seconds he felt nothing as the slack was taken up; then he perceived a tug and knew the grapple was dragging. Now intense silence reigned, broken only by the sputter of the smoking torches. The canoes, spaced over the foggy sea, seemed floating in a void of nothingness; each reflected light quivered and danced with weird and tremulous patterns. Stern played the cable as though it were a fish-line. All his senses centered on interpreting the message it conveyed. Now he felt that it was dragging over sand; now came rocks--and once it caught, held, then jerked free. His heart leaped wildly. Oh, had it only been the aeroplane! The tension grew. Out, far out from the drifting line of boats the canoe went forward; it turned at a word from the patriarch and dragged along the front of the line. It criss-crossed on its path; Stern had to admire the skill and thoroughness with which the boatmen covered the area where their mysterious sixth sense of location told them the machine must lie. All at once a tug, different from all others, yielding, yet firm, set his pulses hammering again. "Got it!" he shouted, for he knew the truth. "Hold fast, there--_she's hooked!_" "You've got it, Allan? Really got it?" cried the girl, starting up. "Oh--" "Feel this!" he answered. "Grab hold and pull!" She obeyed, trembling with eagerness. "It's caught through one of the ailerons, or some yielding part, I think," he said. "Here, help me hold it tight, now; we mustn't let the hook slip out again!" To the patriarch he added: "Tell 'em to back up, there--easy--easy!" The canoe backed, while Stern took up the slack again. When the pull from below was vertical he ordered the boat stopped. "Now get nine other boats close in here," commanded he. The old man gave the order. And presently nine canoes stood in near at hand, while all the rest lay irregularly grouped about them.