his heart leap into his
mouth. It was as though the "Hastings" had struck, lightly, on a
reef. Almost by instinct Jack threw the wheel over to port. Something
was rasping, forcefully, under the hull of the submarine. As the helm
went to port that something underneath, whatever it was, sheered off.

"What was that, Benson?" called up Lieutenant Danvers, sharply.

"Struck something, sir, I'm sure," Jack called back.

At the first sound of trouble, Hal Hastings leaped into the engine room.
Lieutenant Danvers sprang up the stairs into the conning tower. He was
in time to find Captain Jack swinging the nose of the "Hastings" around.
Then the youthful commander signaled for the stop and the reverse.

"Mr. Somers!" shouted Jack, coolly but promptly.

"Aye, sir," called up Eph.

"Take a lantern and get down into the compartments along the keel
forward. See whether we're taking in any water."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"We struck part of a derelict, or something else submerged," guessed
Lieutenant Danvers. "We're lucky, indeed, if our plates are not
sprung."

Then he called down to Biffens to follow and aid Eph Somers.

It was almost dark now. Jack, reaching over, switched on the electric
sidelights outside, and also the white light at the signal masthead.
Then he turned on the searchlight, sending its bright ray through the
gathering darkness.

"Look over there, sir," muttered Jack, holding the searchlight ray
steadily on an object he believed he saw. "Don't you make out, sir,
bobbing up and down when the waves part, what looks like the stump of
the broken-off mast of a vessel submerged? Is it a death-dealing
derelict in the very path of coastwise navigation!"

"By Jove, yes!" gasped Lieutenant Danvers, hoarsely. "Your eyes are
sharp, Benson, and your judgment sound. That, then, was what we
struck on--the mast-stump of a water-logged, sunken derelict! If our
underhull plates are sprung, down we go to the bottom!"

They waited, in dreadful anxiety, for the report of Eph from the region
of the keel plates.

They were far out to sea, and a submarine cannot carry a lifeboat!

CHAPTER IV

A SUBMARINE'S REVENGE

All now waited on Eph's word during the next few moments.

If the "Hastings," striking on that stub of a submerged mast, had had
her plates so badly sprang that pumping would not drive out the water
as fast as it came in, then this newest of the submarines was doomed
to go to the bottom.