Followed a most nerve-racking experience. For hour after hour they swung about under the sea, rocking this way and that, spinning sometimes like a top, ringing on the telephone at regular intervals, and waiting tensely for the sound of a voice to tell them that they were found. All day they waited without any reply. Air was being used up every minute, and death by suffocation was not pleasant to think upon. Even worse was the thought that at any moment the submarine might cease to swing, and would plunge to the bottom like a stone, fracture her plates and wipe them all out in a few seconds. Twenty-four hours passed. All through the darkness of night until dawn those insistent signals went up to the telephone and a sailor waited tensely for an answering voice. None came. Another day of suspense began. The men were like prisoners in a condemned cell, not knowing whether they were going to their doom or whether a reprieve was coming. All the time they were striving to find out what was wrong, struggling to right their craft again. The task was beyond them. Their efforts were of no avail. Still they rocked and swung like a pendulum in the broad Atlantic. It was a nightmare situation. For men to remain so strong and yet so helpless was maddening. So the dreadful hours crept by. An American transport, the _General Goethals_, was steaming down to Panama when one of the men aboard thought he heard the sound of a telephone bell. “What’s that?” he said. His companion looked at him, “What?” “Sounded like a telephone,” said the first man. His shipmate was about to retort when he, too, heard the sound of the bell. “There it is again,” said the first man. “Sure!” answered the companion. Other men came crowding up. “What’s wrong?” they inquired. “Didn’t you hear it?” asked the first man. “What?” “The telephone!” At that moment the sound came to them again. They looked at each other. Some wondered if they were bewitched. They were far out on the open sea, and it seemed impossible that a telephone bell could be ringing there. More and more men crowded round, and more and more heard the bell. There was no mistaking it. It was certainly a telephone bell. So plain was it, so insistent, that at last the captain signalled down to stop the engines. Half a dozen seamen took their places in a boat. Outwards it swung from the side of the ship and a moment later sat with a splash in the sea. Rowing in the direction of the mysterious sound, the sailors at last sighted the buoy with the telephone attached. The stern of the craft was barely visible. Imagine the transports of those unfortunates when voices hailed them cheerfully from above! They had been swinging about in their awful predicament for thirty-five hours when the telephone was picked up, and air was running so short that they had only enough to last them for an hour or two longer. Instantly the men below made clear their peril. The troopship flashed out her wireless call for help.