Chapter III: Saved by a Torpedo

Matt's first move was to take the noose from about his throat and pass the rope around and around the torpedo, tying it fast. The loops of the rope gave him a handhold which he could not possibly have secured otherwise on the hard, smooth shell, rendered slippery by the water with which it was drenched.

The torpedo, he quickly discovered, was a Whitehead--a powerful and deadly engine in use by all the navies of the world.

It was about seventeen feet long and a foot and a half in diameter. Torpedoes of this nature are constructed to run under the surface at any required depth down to twenty feet. A propeller and compressed air furnishes the motive power, and as the air becomes exhausted, the torpedo rises higher and higher. With the air shut off and engine stopped, the cylinder rises to the surface. As that was the case in the present instance, it seemed certain that the motive power of this particular torpedo had been nearly exhausted.

The _Grampus_, being constructed for work in time of war, had torpedo tubes and one torpedo aboard. Matt had studied the mechanism of the Whitehead, and he was able to proceed intelligently in his present dilemma. If there was still any air in the big tube, he might use it to carry him to the north and east, in the direction taken by the _Grampus_.

The lever, he discovered, which locked the engine was standing erect, while the "tripper," which worked automatically the instant the torpedo was discharged and put it under its own power, was lying flat on the curved side.

Before trying to get the compressed air in the shell to working, he swam to the blunt end of the torpedo and removed the small propeller that manipulated the firing pin. By this wise move he rendered harmless the explosive within the shell.

Swimming back, he mounted his queer raft by means of the rope loops, lifted the "tripper," and depressed the starting lever.

The twin screws, placed tandem fashion at the stern, began slowly to revolve. Heading the point of the tube north by east, he began one of the strangest rides that had ever fallen to his lot.

As the air within became more and more depleted, the steel cylinder rose higher and higher in the water.

For a lad so deeply in love with motors as was Matt, the novelty of that ride could not fail to appeal to him. He was safe, at least for a time, and felt sure that ultimately he would gain the shore or be picked up by a coastwise ship. As for the _Grampus_, there were cool heads and steady nerves aboard of her, and the submarine's safety would be looked after. Besides, the mysterious foes had failed in their night's work, and there was probably no more danger to be apprehended from them.

As Matt held himself astride his queer craft, guiding it by a pull this way and that, he fell to thinking of the manner in which he had been hurled into the sea.

Some boat had discharged the torpedo, and it seemed certain that those who had tossed the rope over his head and pulled him from the submarine's deck had been on the same boat.

Had it been the intention of Matt's enemies to haul him aboard their boat, or only to strangle him and keep him in the water until the _Grampus_ got well away, then cast him off and let him sink to the bottom?

Matt's humane instincts rebelled against the latter supposition. His enemies, he reasoned, had intended hauling him aboard their boat, but in some manner had lost hold of the end of the line.

A Whitehead torpedo costs something like four thousand dollars, and is altogether too valuable to leave adrift when it has been fired and misses its target. Those who had discharged the torpedo would surely look for it--and, if they found it, they would also find Matt.

This caused the young motorist a good deal of trepidation. He reasoned, however, that on account of the darkness of the night and the fog, his mysterious foes would probably remain in the part of the ocean where the torpedo had been fired and look for it in the daylight. Between that hour and daylight, Matt was hoping to be picked up.

The compressed air in a torpedo will carry it about nine hundred yards. This torpedo had not gone its full distance, on account of an automatic misplacement of the "tripper" and starting lever, but enough of the air had been used so that Matt's ride was a short one.

After a few minutes the propellers ceased to revolve, and Matt and the steel cylinder came to a stop, heaving up and down on the surface of the water. Yielding to the pull of the current, the torpedo started erratically seaward, and another fear was born in Matt's mind.

The farther seaward he was carried, the more difficult it would be to fall in with a passing boat, and the farther off would be his rescue. To carry his grewsome thoughts still farther, there was a good chance that he would succumb to thirst and hunger before his woeful plight was discovered, and----

But this gloomy train of reflections was interrupted. In the distance Matt could see a glow of light, shining hazily through the fog. Was it the search light of the _Grampus_, or a gleam from the other boat?

Divided between hopes and doubts, he waited and watched. The glow presently resolved itself into a pencil of light, and he became fairly positive that it was the searching eye of the submarine.

"Ahoy!" he shouted.

Instantly a distant commotion struck on his ears.

"Ahoy, ahoy!" came an excited answer. "Is that you, Matt?"

"Yes. Shift your wheel a couple of points to starboard and you'll be heading straight for me. Come slow--and don't run me down."

The gleam of light suddenly shifted its position. Aiming directly at Matt, it grew brighter and brighter. Matt was able to make out the dark outlines of the submarine's low deck and conning tower, and to see three figures well forward toward the bow, all clinging to guys and leaning out over the water.

"Are you swimming, old ship?" came the tense voice of Dick Ferral.

"Hardly," Matt answered. "I've been in the water for upward of an hour--and I couldn't have fought the current that long if I had been compelled to swim."

"How you vas keeping off der pottom, Matt?" piped up the relieved voice of Carl.

"There's a sort of a raft under me," Matt laughed.

"A raft? Where the dickens did you get hold of a raft, Matt?"

This was Glennie.

"Not exactly a raft," went on Matt, "but a Whitehead torpedo. We met each other at just the right time for me. I'm riding the torpedo, and it's a fine thing for keeping a fellow afloat."

Startled expressions came from those on the submarine. By then the Grampus was so close that her search light had Matt and the Whitehead in full glare. The amazement of the boys on the submarine increased.

"Dot's der plamedest t'ing vat I efer heardt oof!" gasped Carl. "Modor Matt riding on a dorpeto schust like it vas a tree, oder somet'ing like dot! Ach, himmelblitzen!"

Speake guided the _Grampus_ alongside the torpedo.

"Be careful, Speake!" warned Glennie. "If that infernal machine bunts into us, we're gone."

"I'm looking out for that," answered Speake.

"You don't need to worry," called Matt reassuringly. "I wasn't going to take chances with two hundred pounds of high explosive, and one of the first things I did was to fix the priming pin so it wouldn't work."

The _Grampus_, responding to a signal flashed into the motor room, came to a halt. Dick threw Matt a rope, and he began tying it to one of the loops that encircled the shell of the torpedo.

"Why are you making fast, matey?" inquired Dick.

"Because I want to tow this torpedo into Lota," answered Matt.

"Oh, bother that! Here we've been all ahoo thinking you were at the bottom and as good as done for. Now that we've found you again--and in a most amazing way, at that--cut loose from that steel tube and come aboard. What's the use of fussing with it?"

"I'll explain when I come aboard," Matt went on. "Make the other end of the line fast, Dick, and give the cable a scope of fifty feet. I've hooked to her so that she will follow us stern foremost."

Glennie helped Dick make the cable fast; then Matt, drawing in on the line, came alongside the rounded deck plates, and Carl helped him off the torpedo.

"Ach, vat a habbiness!" sputtered Carl. "I hat gifen you oop for deadt, Matt, und vat shouldt I efer have done mitoudt my bard? How you come to be like dot, hey?"

"There's something mighty mysterious about it," said Matt. "I thought I heard a noise somewhere in the darkness behind the _Grampus_, and stepped aft to watch and listen; then, before I knew what was up, the noose of a rope fell over my head and tightened about my throat. I went into the water with hardly a splash, unable to give a cry for help."

"I didn't hear a sound!" put in Speake excitedly.

"It was all done so quickly and silently, I don't see how you could have known anything about it, Speake," said Matt. "I was in a bad way when I sighted that torpedo. I got astride of it, started the propellers, and rode in the direction the _Grampus_ had taken. When the compressed air gave out, I was expecting to be picked up by some other boat--by the boat that had fired the torpedo at us."

"At us!" exclaimed Glennie. "Do you mean to say that torpedo that saved you was launched at the _Grampus_?"

"Exactly," returned Matt. "It was the torpedo Dick, Carl, and I saw, and which I thought might be a floating log or a piece of wreckage."

This astounding intelligence almost carried Matt's chums off their feet.

"What enemies have we in these waters?" cried the startled Glennie.

"Why," answered Matt, "who but the Sons of the Rising Sun?"