During this cruise under the waters of Chesapeake Bay, the _Argonaut_ came on the wrecks of several sunken vessels, which Mr. Lake or some member of his crew examined through the open door in the bottom of the diving-compartment. The air inside was kept at a sufficiently high pressure to keep the water from entering, and the man in the submarine could pull up pieces of the wreck with a short boathook, or even reach down and place his bare hand on the back of a big fish swimming past. Sometimes members of the crew would put on diving-suits and walk out over the bottom, keeping in communication with the boat by telephone. Telephone stations were even established on the bottom of the bay, with cables running to the nearest exchange on shore, and conversations were held with people in Baltimore, Washington, and New York. (Perhaps the commanders of German submarines in British waters to-day are using this method to communicate with German spies in London, Dublin, and Liverpool.) The Spanish-American War was being fought while Mr. Lake was making these experiments. The entrance to Hampton Roads was planted with electric mines, but though he was forbidden to go too near them, the inventor proved that nothing would be easier than to locate the cable connecting them with the shore, haul it up into the diver’s compartment of the _Argonaut_ and cut it. He did this with a dummy cable of his own, and then repeatedly begged the navy department to let him take the _Argonaut_ into the harbor of Santiago de Cuba and disable the mines that were keeping Admiral Sampson’s fleet from going in and smashing the Spanish squadron there. But his offer, like that of John P. Holland, was refused. “In 1898, also,” says Mr. Lake, “the _Argonaut_ made the trip from Norfolk to New York under her own power and unescorted. In her original form she was a cigar-shaped craft with only a small percentage of reserve buoyancy in her surface cruising condition. We were caught out in the severe November northeast storm of 1898 in which over two hundred vessels were lost and we did not succeed in reaching a harbor in the ‘horseshoe’ back of Sandy Hook until three o’clock in the morning. The seas were so rough they would break over her conning-tower in such masses I was obliged to lash myself fast to prevent being swept overboard. It was freezing weather and I was soaked and covered with ice on reaching harbor.” [Illustration: Courtesy of International Marine Engineering. _Argonaut_ as Rebuilt.]