With the glaring light of the _Nautilus'_ reflectors shining more
dazzlingly at this close range than any extraneous natural light that
filtered through from the sun, Superintendent Brown beheld the crude
yet only partially obliterated legend: "E-70."
"Fine and dandy!" he shouted. "It's proof positive. The craft out there
is none other than the lost U. S. submarine chaser that was rammed last
summer, as Captain Austin has told us. A fine feather in the cap of all
of us. A find the first day out."
The superintendent's enthusiasm was contagious. It spread to Larry
Seymour like wildfire.
"Three cheers for the _Nautilus_ and the _Jules Verne_!" he cried in
his excitement.
Deep down under the water, all unseen by the world, these five
submarine navigators rejoiced over the success of their venture. This,
the first trip of the twin diving craft, had so far proved eminently
satisfactory.
"Boys, we have here the positive proof tangibly before our eyes,"
said Superintendent Brown. "But suppose, in order to convince our
many friends upstairs on the deck of the _Jules Verne_" (he pointed
laughingly up "The Subway" out of the _Nautilus_), "we take something
of the E-70 along with us as a souvenir? What say?"
Everybody nodded assent.
"What will it be?" asked Captain Austin.
"Oh, say a smokestack or one of her boilers," snickered the
superintendent, who had a rare good sense of humor for all occasions.
"Suppose we take the whole blooming sub-chaser with us," shot back
Austin, not to be outdone in the pleasantries.
They resolved to go fishing for a souvenir of the E-70, and accordingly
signaled the _Jules Verne_ to be lifted in the water. So soon as the
_Nautilus_ had been raised level with the sloping deck of the submarine
chaser he flashed again for a stop and then buzzed for a slow movement
ahead. Unerringly the tiny diving chamber was pushed forward directly
over the forward deck of the E-70. Through the aquascope at their feet
the five men in the _Nautilus_ could see the outlines of the lost craft
silhouetted against the background of the sea bottom.
"Now to go down slowly," mused the ship's captain. Gracefully as in an
elevator in the Woolworth Tower the _Nautilus_ was eased down until it
was poised directly over the forward deck of the E-70 to starboard.
"See anything you can get a hold of?" asked Captain Austin as he
brought the _Nautilus_ to a stop not more than five or ten feet from
the submarine chaser.
Everybody in the party, including the superintendent, was down on his
knees peering through the aquascope.
"Sure as a cat has kittens!" yelled Larry Seymour. "Slip me a knockout
if I don't see one of that old busted bird's binnacle lamps still
hanging there. See it!" He was pointing now and directing the others
where to look.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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