Early in 1919 one or two tests showed that they could raise the monster when the time was ripe. But Major Gianelli, the engineer in charge, was taking no chances. To make quite sure of lifting her, he caused eight large pontoons to be fixed to her, each capable of sustaining a load of 350 tons, so in all he obtained from them the power to lift 2800 tons. These pontoons, or camels as they are sometimes called in salvage circles, are strong metal cylinders something like big boilers or tanks. They are of the utmost importance in salvage operations and figure in most wreck-raising work. All were filled with water and sunk into position exactly where their lifting power was most wanted. The divers lashed them with strong steel cables securely to the sides of the battleship, and by the month of June the work on the mammoth craft was all but complete. Remained the problem of making it possible to tow her to dry dock. Notwithstanding that all projections had been cut away from her deck, she drew so great a depth of water that it was obvious she would foul the bottom before going any distance. To obviate this danger, the Italians set dredgers to work to cut a channel all the way from the wreck to the gates of the dry dock. The making of this channel, which was a mile and a half long, entailed the removal of thousands of tons of mud, but the salvors regarded this task as trivial compared with the work they had accomplished on the overturned ship. Then the dock itself required to be specially prepared, for like all dry docks it was planned to take a vessel upright and not upside-down. The chocks down the centre of the dock, which normally support the keel of a docked vessel, were quite useless so far as the _Leonardo da Vinci_ was concerned. So a forest of timber began to spring up in the dry dock. Mighty baulks of wood, 15 inches and more square, were built up from the bottom of the dock. These followed the outline of the ship so that the deck could be brought exactly over them and allowed to sink into place upon them. Other gigantic piles of timber were constructed to support particular parts of the deck. By September 17, 1919, all these preparations were completed. The air compressors forced the water out of the pontoons and out of the hull. Certain compartments of the ship were filled with water in order to balance her evenly--and then the keel, with the great pontoons straining upwards, slowly arose out of the sea. For a time a stern battle went on between the mud which was gripping her and seeking to hold her down and the air which was striving to lift her to the surface. Then the air won. The battleship slipped from the grip of the mud, leaving her guns and turrets still embedded, and floated on the surface once more. [Illustration: A UNIQUE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE LEONARDO DA VINCI AS SHE LAY IN THE BAY OF TARANTO WITH ALL THE SALVAGE CRAFT AROUND HER JUST BEFORE SHE WAS TURNED OVER]