Jay and Dick stood conversing in low tones, while Larry kept up his
inspection of the diving chamber. This was a new experience for him and
he was distinctly not at home.
"Looks like it is a small craft of some kind ... might be a destroyer
... perhaps a fishing boat ... no, it's bigger and of a different
design ... well heeled over to port ... close enough."
Fragments of the conversation between Cap Austin and the yard
superintendent floated back to the ears of the Brighton boys. They were
as interested as their elders in the proceedings. What an extraordinary
thing if on this first trip of the _Jules Verne_ and the _Nautilus_ a
lost ship should be found!
"Don't you think we had better stop now and drift up a bit with the
tide?" the superintendent was asking.
Captain Austin thought it better to go just a little closer. Ten or
fifteen seconds passed when he leaped forward suddenly and rang the
bell for the engines to be stopped immediately. Quietly and with
scarcely a tremor the _Nautilus_ glided to a standstill in the deep.
The locomotion of the craft surely was perfect.
"Navy craft of some kind," ejaculated the superintendent after a brief
pause. During the interim he had been studying the object now close at
hand.
"I can see old battleship gray paint first of all," he added.
A naval craft! For the moment Captain Austin was nonplussed. Surely no
one knew Long Island Sound better than he; and he had no recollection
on the moment of any naval craft having been sunk there for some years.
True, during the war, there had been naval maneuvers of all kinds in
the Sound, particularly of the lighter draught vessels stationed at
various points from the Brooklyn Navy Yard up to Rock Island, Maine.
But none----And then it dawned on his mind: A sub-chaser--the E-70.
Sure enough, such a craft had been accidentally rammed one day by one
of the new Lake submarines just off the ways. Although valiant efforts
had been made to save the craft after she had been rammed, all the work
had been in vain. Down she had gone in many fathoms of water.
"I have it. It's the E-70 that went down last August," exclaimed the
captain as he turned to the superintendent.
"Montey" listened while "Cap" Austin unfolded the whole story of the
disaster that had wiped a ship from the roster of the U. S. Navy.
"Suppose we make sure of our identification then, particularly since we
have been so fortunate as to run upon a derelict our very first trip
out," suggested the superintendent.
Captain Austin agreed that it would be the ideal thing to thoroughly
test out the _Jules Verne_ and the _Nautilus_ with a minute inspection
of the find that fate had so coincidentally thrown in their way.
Accordingly they jockeyed the _Nautilus_ to and fro through the water
until they had found the bow of the submarine chaser. Jay and Dick had
been reminded by their captain to keep their eyes open and take in
every detail of the operation of the new diving craft.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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