Chapter XVIII: The Battle

Meanwhile, Dave and Doris were warming to the search for the small trading boat that had meant so much to Kennedy and Mildred.

Having found the approximate location where the little supply schooner sank, Dave climbed into the steel ball and was lowered into the deep. For an hour after that, with the steel ball always close to the bottom, they sailed about in ever widening circles. From time to time Doris called on the radio:

"See anything?"

"Yes, a whole flotilla of jellyfish," would come Dave's laughing answer. Or--"there's an ancient wreck off to the right--goes back to pirate days, I'm sure. But I don't catch the faintest gleam of a white schooner."

When at last he returned to the surface and was released from his spherical prison, he complained of eye-strain.

"Let me go down with you," Doris pleaded. "I'll be eyes for you. Together we can't fail to find the schooner. We just must get it located!"

"What do you say, professor?" Dave turned to his superior.

"What's the bottom like?"

"All sand."

"No rocks?"

"Not a one."

"O.K., my girl--in you go." The professor waved a hand, and in they went.

To the imaginative Doris, this fairyland of waving seaweed, darting fish, and drifting jellyfish was most entertaining, but she never forgot their real mission. "Dave!" she exclaimed more than once. "I see something!" A moment of excitement, and then--"No--it's nothing but a bit of coral, after all."

Then, of a sudden, a whisper reached her ear:

"One eighty--eighty-two and a half--eighty four--"

"Dave! He's back! The whisperer is back!" Doris spoke before she thought.

"Why! Hello there, mermaid!" came in words startlingly distinct.

Doris and Dave remained silent. Who could this be? Where was he? On land, or in the sea? Or on it?

For a time they heard that whispering of numbers. Then it faded, as abruptly as it had come.

As they drifted, they quietly discussed the strange whispering, but came to no logical conclusions. Neither did they sight any white schooner, resting on the bottom.

* * * * * * * *

For a long time, there on the side of the hill beneath the tropical sun, Kennedy's fighting band watched and waited.

"The signal will come," Johnny thought with a thrill. "The signal to move! And then--

"There! There it is now!" he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper.

There had come the distant scream of a wild parrot. One more scream.

"Now!" said Kennedy. "Let's go!"

"We go," old Samatan said, simply.

Johnny would have taken the lead, but the old man pushed him back. Cautiously they moved straight ahead.

Johnny sighed in relief as they reached the end of a narrow pass. That, he thought, would have been a bad place to be caught. His sense of relief was short-lived, however, for out from the wide door of the ancient castle, burst a man with a rifle. Instantly Johnny recognized him as the man whom he had saved from the grip of the octopus.

"Come on!" he exclaimed, as the man leveled his rifle. A shot cracked out, and a bullet burned Johnny's cheek. Next instant the man dodged and the rifle clattered from his nerveless hands. There had been a flash of steel, as Samatan had thrown his machete. Its point was buried in the door, just back of the spot where the man's head had been.

Dropping his rifle, Johnny executed a flying tackle, bringing the man to the ground, with a thud. Instantly two powerful natives pinned him to the earth.

"Come on!" Kennedy shouted, as the door stood open a crack. "We're going in!" His powerful shoulder forced the door so suddenly that a man on the other side of it was instantly floored. A second man--huge, fat, beast-like--lurched at Kennedy with a knife. He was felled with one blow of the old man's bare fist.

"Now!" Kennedy roared, towering over the prostrate pair. "Tell me where my granddaughter is or I'll tear you limb from limb!"

"Girl?" the fat man stammered in broken English. "Gone--gone."

"Where to?" Kennedy touched the man none too gently with his foot. But the halting reply could not be understood.

"Please, sir," came in a youthful voice from the corner, "if I may, I will tell you.

"But first I must tell you," said the youth who, until now, had not been noticed, "that I am not one of these!" He nodded at the men on the floor. "I was coming to America to join my father, and they compelled me to accompany them here."

"Is that true?" Kennedy demanded of the stout man on the floor. The man nodded.

"All right. Tell us." Kennedy's voice softened a little as he spoke to the youth. "Where is my granddaughter?"

"They took her to the submarine," said the boy.

"The submarine?" Kennedy stared.

"Yes. There is a submarine," said the boy. "They are making a survey of the sea-bottom around these islands! Don't you see," the boy seemed anxious to please, "in time of war, they shall place depth bombs and steel nets--and establish submarine bases!"

"I see," Kennedy replied in a low tone that was not good to hear. "Very nice, I should say. We seem to have stumbled into the situation at about the right time!

"But my granddaughter." His voice rose. "She is on this submarine?"

"Yes sir."

"Then," roared Kennedy, "we shall find the submarine! And if we do not--or if my granddaughter has been harmed--!" He laid his machete, sheath and all, across the stout man's throat. And the stout man turned a sickish, yellow-green. And not without reason.

"Get up!" commanded Kennedy. The two men stood up. "I'll guard them," he said to Johnny. "You and the natives search this place. Gather up every scrap of paper to be found. There should be ample evidence of this espionage. And--there is not a moment to be lost!"

"Not a second," said Johnny.

A few hours later, with three other prisoners taken by the second band of natives attempting to flee from the rear of the castle, they were back at the Kennedy cottage. At once Johnny and Samatan prepared to leave for the _Sea Nymph_.

"We'll do all in our power to find that submarine," Johnny assured Kennedy, as he and Samatan pushed off....

But Johnny could not have known, of course that the submarine had been found....

* * * * * * * *

For a long time Doris had watched the sea bottom as the steel ball moved about in a circle that ever grew wider. So absorbed had she become that her ear-phones were forgotten. When suddenly a voice broke in on her thoughts, she jumped involuntarily.

"Hey, there! I say, there! Are you there?" came in a hoarse, anxious voice. "Listen! It's important! Listen! Are you there?"

Doris adjusted her microphone, then answered, as her heart missed a beat. "Yes, we are here. Why?"

"Listen!" came in gutteral tones. "We are on the bottom, and we can't get up!"

"Try the Australian crawl," Doris laughed into her speaker. These people were good at kidding, whoever they were.

"Listen!" came in a man's voice, hoarse and insistent--even pleading. "We are in a small submarine. We are on bottom and our pumps have failed!"

"Submarine!" Doris whispered, as she and Dave gaped at each other.

"We are about two hundred feet down," the voice went on, desperately. "Something's gone wrong with our pumps, and we can't blow out the water in our compartments. You gotta help us. We have a friend of yours here and she'll tell you I'm speaking the truth!"

Doris and Dave were startled beyond description when they heard Mildred Kennedy's voice coming over the air.

"Listen, Doris," the girl's voice was tense with emotion. "I'm down here in this submarine. I blundered onto that ancient castle up on the ridge, and there were spies there. They wouldn't let me go because they--they said I'd tell what I saw. And that--that's true. I would!

"But these boys on the submarine--they--" her voice broke a little, "they're not really spies! They're just boys in the navy of their country, doing what they're ordered to do. They've been decent to me, and they'd have put me back on land if they'd dared. So--so you can't let them die like this. You just can't, Doris! Besides, I--" she choked, and could not finish.

"We won't let them die and most of all--we won't let _you_ die!" declared Dave, who had been absorbing every word. "Just you keep cool and stand by. We--we'll have our whole navy here in no time. Just you see!"

"Th--thanks, Dave ... Mil--Mildred, signing off," came in a wee small voice.

"Gee, she's a game kid," whispered Dave to Doris. Then into his microphone:

"Put that man on again," he said.

"Here, here I am," came the hoarse voice from the submarine.

"Here's what we'll do," Dave said, shortly.

"We have a fairly powerful wireless on our ship. We'll get in touch with the United States Naval Station at Port au Prince at once, and report the situation. They will send assistance--even though you're over here to help your spies! Now--give me your location--in code."

"O.K." the foreigner answered, humbly, "Here it is. 2 - 4 - 7, 9 - 3 - 6, 1 - 6 - 3 - 9, 3 - 7 - 9.--That is all. Will you please repeat?"

Dave read the numbers he had written, and the sub commander checked them again.

"Don't be nervous or frightened about the girl, here," he said. "We have oxygen enough for thirty-six hours, at least."

"I hate to think what would happen to you if any harm comes to her," Dave answered, grimly. "We're signing off and going up."

To get the Port au Prince naval station was only a matter of moments, after the steel ball was back on board.

"There's a submarine and a coastguard cutter at Santiago de Cuba," was the answer. "We will get in touch with them at once, and you can be sure of fast action!"

After a short wait came the encouraging news: "Submarine and cutter proceeding to the rescue under forced draft!"

Fifteen minutes later the _Sea Nymph_ was in motion. Dave, having obtained the grounded submarine's location, would sail to the spot and stand by to aid, if possible.

"Perhaps we'll go down in the steel ball and reach them before that sub arrives," he said.

"But Dave!" Doris exclaimed. "What can one submarine do for another on the bottom? Surely they can't raise it!"

"No--o, they couldn't. Nor could we. But then," Dave sighed, "there must be some way. We'll have to leave that to the navy, I guess."

Two hours later the steel ball rested on the sandy bottom some two hundred feet down, and within twenty feet of the submarine's dark bulk. As Dave and Doris stared out of their window, they saw a face in a port of the submarine. It was Mildred, and she was waving at them.

"Only twenty feet," Doris murmured, "and yet for the moment there's nothing we can do! How strange--and how--how terrible!"