"Are they still after us?" asked Mr. Swift of his son, as
he emerged from the engine-room, where he had gone to make
some adjustments to the machinery, with the hope of
increasing the speed.
"I'll go look," volunteered the lad. He climbed up into
the conning tower again, and for a moment, as he gazed back
into the black waters swirling all about, he hoped that they
had lost the Wonder. But a moment later his heart sank as he
caught sight, through the liquid element, of the flickering
gleams of another searchlight, the rays undulating through
the sea.
"Still following," murmured the young inventor. "They're
not going to give up. But we must make 'em--that's all."
He went down to report what he had seen, and a
consultation was held. Captain Weston carefully studied the
charts of that part of the ocean, and finding that there was
a great depth of water at hand, proposed a series of
evolutions.
"We can go up and down, shoot first to one side and then
to the other," he explained. "We can even drop down to the
bottom and rest there for a while. Perhaps, in that way, we
can shake them off."
They tried it. The Advance was sent up until her conning
tower was out of the water, and then she was suddenly forced
down until she was but a few feet from the bottom.
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