ng, or, in fact, to venture to the spot at
all.

It was an American boy who, after reading Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea," said to himself, "Why not?" and from that time
set out to put into practice what the French writer had imagined.

Simon Lake set to work to invent a way by which a wrecked vessel or a
precious cargo could be got at from below the surface. Though the waves
may be tossing their whitecaps high in air and the strong wind may turn
the watery plain into rolling hills of angry seas, the water twenty or
thirty feet below hardly feels any surface motion. So he set to work to
build a vessel that should be able to sail on the surface or travel on
the bottom, and provide a shelter from which divers could go at will,
undisturbed by the most tempestuous sea. People laughed at his idea, and
so he found great difficulty in getting enough capital to carry out his
plan, and his first boat, built largely with his own hands, had little
in its appearance to inspire confidence in his scheme. Built of wood,
fourteen feet long and five feet deep, fitted with three wheels,
_Argonaut Junior_ looked not unlike a large go-cart such as boys make
out of a soap-box and a set of wooden wheels. The boat, however, made
actual trips, navigated by its inventor, proving that his plan was
feasible. _Argonaut Junior,_ having served its purpose, was abandoned,
and now lies neglected on one of the beaches of New York Bay.

The _Argonaut,_ Mr. Lake's second vessel, had the regular submarine
look, except that she was equipped with two great, rough tread-wheels
forward, and to the underside of her rudder was pivoted another. She was
really an under-water tricycle, a diving-bell, a wrecking-craft, and a
surface gasoline-boat all rolled into one. When floating on the surface
she looked not unlike an ordinary sailing craft; two long spars, each
about thirty feet above the deck, forming the letter A--these were the
pipes that admitted fresh air and discharged the burnt gases of the
gasoline motor and the vitiated air that had been breathed. A low deck
gave a ship-shape appearance when floating, but below she was shaped
like a very fat cigar. Under the deck and outside of the hull proper
were placed her gasoline tanks, safe from any possible danger of
ignition from the interior. From her nose protruded a spar that looked
like a bowsprit but which was in reality a derrick; below the
derrick-boom were several glazed openings