Tom Swift and His Undersea Search Part 10

Tom Swift arrived at a sudden determination. Once again the motors were stopped, and the boat gradually a.s.sumed an even keel.

"What are you going to try, Tom?" asked Ned.

"I'm going to shove her farther into the mud bank," announced the young inventor. "I think that's the only way to get her loose."

"Bless my apple pie, Tom!" cried Mr. Damon, "doesn't that seem a foolish thing to do?"

"It's the only thing to do, I believe," was the answer. "This mud is of a peculiar sticky and holding kind. The sub's nose is in it like a peg in a hole. What I propose to do now is to enlarge the hole, and then our nose will come loose--I hope."

"But you haven't any right to shove our nose further in!" cried Mr.

Hardley. "I won't allow it! I demand to be put on the surface! I won't be drowned down here before I get the gold that's coming to me--the gold and--"

"Now look here!" suddenly cried Tom. "I'm in command of this boat, and you'll do as I say. I'll gladly set you on the surface if I can, and this is the only way it can be brought about--it's the only way to save all of us. I'm going to enlarge the mud hole so we can pull out. Please keep still!"

Mr. Hardley stared at the young inventor a moment, seemed about to say something, and then changed his mind.

"Hold fast, everybody!" suddenly called Tom. The next moment the M. N.

1 began behaving in a most peculiar manner.

She appeared to be acting like a corkscrew. While her bow was comparatively steady, her stern described a circle in the water which was churned to mud by the two propellers, each being revolved in a different direction.

"I'm trying to make the hole bigger just as an amateur carpenter makes a nail hole bigger, so he can pull out the nail, by twisting it around," explained Tom. "The motion may be a bit unpleasant, but it is needful."

And indeed the motion was unpleasant. Tom, veteran airman and sailor that he was, began to feel a trifle seasick, and Mr. Hardley was in very evident distress.

Suddenly, however, something happened. The M. N. 1 gave a lurch to one side and then shot upward so quickly that Ned and Mr. Damon lost their balance and slumped over on the bench that ran around three sides of the room.

"Are we free?" cried Mr. Hardley.

"We have come loose from the mud bank," said Tom quietly. "By boring into it the hole was enlarged sufficiently to enable us to pull loose.

There is no more danger!"

His announcement was received in momentary silence, and then Ned exclaimed:

"Hurray!"

"Bless my accident policy!" voiced Mr. Damon.

Mr. Hardley appeared dazed, and then, as the submarine was again moving through the water, seemingly none the worse for the accident, the gold seeker approached Tom Swift.

"I want to apologize, Mr. Swift, for my actions and words," said Mr.

Hardley frankly. "I admit that I lost my head. But it's my first trip in a submarine."

"I realize that," said Tom, equally frank, "and we'll forget all about it. It was a strain on you--on all of us--though there really was no very great danger. Now, are you game enough to continue the trip?"

"Try me!" exclaimed the adventurer. "You won't find me acting so like a baby again."

Nor did he, even when the craft reached the open ocean and went down to a considerable depth, where, had any accident occurred, there would have been grave danger to all. But Mr. Hardley seemed to enjoy it.

"Maybe I've misjudged him," Tom said to Ned, when they were getting ready to go back.

"It's possible," agreed the financial manager. This trial, which so nearly ended disastrously, was only one of several. No damage resulted from the collision with the river mud bank, and that trip and the ones following gave Tom some new ideas in interior construction which he followed out.

About a month later all was ready for the trip to the West Indies to look for the ill-fated Pandora. Tom's affairs were put in shape, the submarine was laden with stores and provisions, the new diving bell and other wonderful apparatus were put aboard, and the crew and officers picked. Ned, Mr. Damon, Koku, and Tom were, of course, together, and though Mr. Hardley was a stranger, he seemed to become more friendly as the days pa.s.sed.

"Well, we start in the morning," said Tom to Ned one evening. "I'm going over to tell Mary goodbye."

"Give her my regards," requested Ned, and Tom said he would.

CHAPTER X

STARTLING REVELATIONS

"Oh, Tom! And so you are really ready to start on that perilous trip!"

exclaimed Mary Nestor, a little later that same evening, when Tom called at Mary's house in his speedy electric runabout, a car in which he had once made a sensational ride.

"Perilous? I don't know why you call it that!" exclaimed the young inventor.

"Didn't you tell me you were stuck in a mud bank away down under the river and had hard work to get loose?" asked the young lady, as she made a place for Tom on the sofa beside her.

"Oh, that! Why, that wasn't anything!" he declared.

"It would have been if you hadn't come up."

"Ah, but we did come up, Mary."

"Suppose you get in a similar position when you find the wreck of the Pandora? You won't get up so easily, will you?"

"No. But there aren't any mud banks in that part of the Atlantic, so I can't be stuck in one," answered Tom.

For some time Tom Swift and Mary talked of mutual friends and happenings in which they were both interested. Mr. and Mrs. Nestor stepped into the room for a minute, to wish the young inventor good luck on his voyage, and when they had gone out, promising to see Tom before he left for the night, the latter remarked to Mary:

"Did your uncle ever find the oil-well papers and get his affairs straightened out?"

"No," was the answer, "he never did. And we feel very sorry for him.

Just think, he had a fortune in his grasp, and now it is slipping away."

"Just what happened?" asked Tom, hoping there might be some way in which he could aid Mary's uncle. Of course, Tom wanted to help Mary, and this was one of the ways.

"Well, I don't exactly understand it all," she replied. "Father says I'll never have a head for business. But as nearly as I can tell, my uncle, Barton Keith, went into partners.h.i.+p with a man to prospect for oil in Texas. My uncle has been in that business before, and he was very successful. He supplied the working knowledge about oil wells, I believe, and the other man put up the money. My uncle was to have a half share in whatever oil wells he located, and his partner supplied the cash for putting down the pipe, or whatever is done."

"I believe putting down a pipe is the proper term," said Tom.

"Well, anyhow," went on Mary, "my uncle spent many weary months prospecting in Texas. In fact, he made himself ill, being out in all sorts of weather, looking after the drilling. At last they struck oil, as I believe they call it. They drilled down until they brought in what my uncle called a 'gusher,' and there was a chance of him and his partner getting rich."