He returned to the control room where the motors were raced first ahead and then in reverse, but the _S-18_ failed to rise out of the muck and instead seemed to be burrowing its way further into the soft stuff. Commander Ford ordered the motors cut out and called the crew into the control room. "We're in a jam," he said. "You know as well as I do that we can't expect help from the surface in time to do us any good. If we escape we've got to do it ourselves and there's only one way. That's by using one of the special depth bombs and hoping it will jar us loose. There's a chance the explosion may crush our own hull, but that's a risk we'll have to take." "Let's get it over with," put in the chief electrician. "I was on the bottom of the English channel for twelve hours in a sub during the war and this waiting is awful." The rest of the crew voiced the sentiments of the chief electrician. Pat was placed in charge of the control room while Commander Ford and Charlie Gill and Russ Graham, the divers, and Joe Gartner, the torpedo man and gunner, went ahead to make preparations to explode the bomb. The explosive was dangerous stuff and none of them relished handling it, but in it they saw their one chance of escape. The bomb was in a special steel case with a small aperture in which the timing device was located. The fuse was set for five minutes and the bomb placed in the diving chamber. Tim's nerves felt shaky. The bomb was going now. In just five minutes the deadly blast would go off. If they didn't get it out of the diving chamber and against the derelict, there wouldn't be a ghost of a chance for them. But Charlie Gill and Russ Graham were versatile men. They had been in plenty of tight places before. Working quickly and surely, they opened the outer door of the diving chamber. At that depth a terrific spray of water shot into the inner chamber and the bomb bobbed from side to side. Then the force of the water pushed it outside the hull of the submarine. In the glow from the searchlight they saw the bomb drift away from the side of the submarine. The same current which was holding the _S-18_ fast against the derelict was driving the bomb against it. Commander Ford, watch in hand, was counting the seconds. "Better close the outer door of the diving compartment," he told Charlie Gill. "There's little more than a minute left." The Commander of the _S-18_ hurried back to the control room. "On the alert," he told the men. "Everyone be ready for double quick action. There's thirty seconds left before the bomb explodes." Tim glanced around the room. Erich Gaunt and Forman Gay were bent over the levers which controlled the ballast tanks. Pat was tense at the diving rudders while back in the motor room George Gadd stood by to help the chief electrician. The crew of the _S-18_ was ready.