"
"Mr. Benson," broke in Jetson suddenly, "I heard once that you
submarine experts had invented a way of leaving a submarine boat
by means of the torpedo tube. Why can't you do that now?"
"We could," smiled Lieutenant Jack Benson, "if our compressed
air apparatus were working. We can't do the trick without compressed
air. If we had any of that which we could use, we wouldn't need
to leave the boat and swim to the top. We could take the boat to
the surface instead."
"Then it's impossible, sir, to leave the boat?" questioned Jetson,
his color again fading.
"Yes; if we opened the outer end of the torpedo tube, without
being able to throw compressed air in there first, then the water
would rush in and drown us."
"I'm filled with wonder," Dan Dalzell muttered to himself. "Staring
certain death in the face, I can't understand how it happens that
I'm not going around blubbering and making a frantic jackanapes
of myself. There's not a chance of living more than an hour or
two longer, and yet I'm calm. I wonder how it happens? It isn't
because I don't know what is coming to me. I wonder if the other
fellows feel just as I do?"
Dan glanced curiously around him at the other midshipmen faces.
"Do you know," said Darrin quietly, "I've often wondered how other
men have felt in just such a fix as we're in now."
"Well, how do you feel, Darry?" Farley invited.
"I'm blessed if I really know. Probably in an instant when I fail
briefly to realize all that this means my feeling is that I wouldn't
have missed such an experience for anything.
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