Tom Swift and His Undersea Search; Or, the Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic

by Victor Appleton

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE SERPENT WEED

  All waited eagerly for Tom Swift to verify the statement of the othermathematician, and the young inventor was not long in doing this, forhe had what is commonly known as a "good head for figures."

  "Yes, I see the mistake," said Tom. "The wrong logarithm was taken, andof course that threw out all the calculations. I should say we werenearer three miles off our supposed location than two miles."

  "Does that mean," asked Mr. Damon, "that we began a search for thewreck of the Pandora three miles from the place Hardley told us shewas."

  "That's about it," Tom said. "No wonder we couldn't find her."

  "What are you going to do?" Ned wanted to know.

  "Get to the right spot as soon as possible and begin the search there,"Tom answered. "You see, before we submerged as nearly as possible atthe place where we thought the Pandora might be on the ocean bottom.From there we began making circles under the sea, enlarging thediameter each circuit.

  "That didn't bring us anywhere, as you all know. Now we will start ourseries of circles with a different point as the center. It will bringus over an entirely different territory of the ocean floor."

  "Just a moment," said Ned, as the conference was about to break up. "Isit possible, Tom, that in our first circling that we covered any of theground which we may cover now? I mean will the new circles we proposemaking coincide at any place with the previous ones?"

  "They won't exactly coincide," answered the young inventor. "You can'tmake circles coincide unless you use the same center and the sameradius each time. But the two series of circles will intersect atcertain places."

  "I guess intersect is the word I wanted," admitted Ned.

  "What's the idea?" Tom wanted to know.

  "I'm thinking of Hardley," answered his chum. "He might assert that wepurposely went to the wrong location with him to begin the search, andif we afterward find the wreck and the gold, he may claim a share."

  "Not much he won't!" cried Tom.

  "Bless my check book, I should say not!" exclaimed Mr. Damon.

  "Hardley broke off relations with us of his own volition," said Tom."He 'breached the contract,' as the lawyers say. It was his own doing.

  "He has put me to considerable expense and trouble, not to say danger.He was aware of that, and yet he refused to pay his share. He accusedme of incompetence. Very well. That presuggested that I must have madean error, and it was on that assumption that he said I did not know mybusiness. Instead of giving me a chance to correct the error, which hedeclared I had made, he quit--cold. Now he is entitled to no furtherconsideration.

  "An error was made--there's no question of that. We are going tocorrect it, and we may find the gold. If we do I shall feel I have alegal and moral right to take all of it I can get. Mr. Hardley, to usea comprehensive, but perhaps not very elegant expression, may go fishfor his share."

  "That's right!" asserted Mr. Damon.

  "I guess you're right, Tom," declared Ned. "There's only one more thingto be considered."

  "What's that?" asked the young inventor.

  "Why, Hardley himself may find out in some way that we were barking upthe wrong tree, so to speak. That is, learn we started at the wrongnautical point. He may get up another expedition to come and search forthe gold and--"

  "Well, he has that right and privilege," said Tom coolly. "But I don'tbelieve he will. Anyhow, if he does, we have the same chance, and abetter one than he has. We're right here, almost on the ground, youmight say, or we shall be in half an hour. Then we'll begin our search.If he beats us to it, that can't be helped, and we'll be as fair to himas he was to us. This treasure, as I understand it, is available towhoever first finds it, now that the real owners, whoever they were,have given it up."

  "I guess you're right there," said Mr. Damon. "I'm no sea lawyer, but Ibelieve that in this case finding is keeping."

  "And there isn't one chance in a hundred that Hardley can get anothersubmarine here to start the search," went on Tom. "Of course it'spossible, but not very probable."

  "He might get an ordinary diving outfit and try," Ned suggested.

  "Not many ordinary divers would take a chance going down in the opensea to the depth the Pandora is supposed to lie," Tom said. "But, withall that, we have the advantage of being on the ground, and I'm goingto make use of that advantage right away."

  He gave orders at once for the M. N. 1 to proceed, and this she did onthe surface. It was decided to steam along on the open sea until theexact nautical position desired was reached. This position was the sameMr. Hardley had indicated, but that position was not before attained,owing to an error in the calculations.

  As all know, to get to a certain point on the surface of the ocean,where there is no land to give location, a navigator has to depend onmathematical calculations. The earth's surface is divided by imaginarylines. The lines drawn from the north to the south poles are calledmeridians of longitude. They are marked in degrees, and indicatedistance east or west of the meridian of, say, Greenwich, England,which is taken as one of the centers. The degrees are further dividedinto minutes and seconds, each minute being a sixtieth of a degree andeach second, naturally, the sixtieth of a minute.

  Now, if a navigator had to depend only on the meridian lines indicatingdistance east and west, he might be almost any distance north or southof where he wanted to go. So the earth is further divided into sectionsby other imaginary lines called parallels of latitude. As all know,these indicate the distance north or south of the middle line, or theequator. The equator goes around the earth at the middle, so to speak,running from east to west, or from west to east, according as it islooked at. The meridian of Greenwich may be regarded as a sort of halfequator, running half way around the earth in exactly the oppositedirection, or from north to south.

  The place where any two of these imaginary lines, crossing at rightangles, meet may be exactly determined by the science of navigation. Itis a complicated and difficult science, but by calculating the distanceof the sun above the horizon, sometimes by views of stars, by knowingthe speed of the ship, and by having the exact astronomical time athand, shown on an accurate chronometer, the exact position of a ship atany hour may be determined.

  By this means, if a navigator wants to get to a place where two certainlines cross, indicating an exact spot in the ocean, he is able to doso. He can tell for instance when he has reached the place where theseventy-second degree of longitude, west from Greenwich, meets andcrossed the twentieth parallel of latitude. This spot is just off thenorthern coast of Haiti. Other positions are likewise determined.

  It was after about an hour of rather slow progress on the surface ofthe calm sea, no excess speed being used for fear of over-running themark, that Tom and his associates gathered on deck again to makeanother calculation.

  Long and carefully they worked out their position, and when, at last,the figures had been checked and checked again, to obviate the chanceof another error, the young inventor exclaimed:

  "Well, we're here!"

  "Really?" cried Ned.

  "No doubt of it," said his chum.

  "Bless my doormat!" cried Mr. Damon. "And do you mean to say, TomSwift, that if we submerge now we'll be exactly where the Pandora lies,a wreck on the floor of the ocean.

  "I mean to say that we're at exactly the spot where Hardley said shewent down," corrected Tom, "and we weren't there before--that is not sothat we actually knew it. Now we are, and we're going down. But thatdoesn't guarantee that we'll find the wreck. She may have shifted, orbe covered with sand. All that I said before in reference to thedifficulty in locating something under the surface of the sea stillholds good."

  Once more, to make very certain there was no error, the figures weregone over, Then, as one result checked the other, Tom put away thepapers, the nautical almanac, and said:

  "Let's go!"

  Slowly the tanks of the M. N. 1 began to fill. It was decided to lether sink straight down, instead
of descending by means of the verticalrudders. In that way it was hoped to land her as nearly as possible onthe exact spot where the Pandora was supposed to be.

  "How deep will it be, Tom?" asked Ned, as he stood beside his chum inthe forward observation cabin and watched the needle of the gauge movehigher and higher.

  "About six hundred feet, I judge, going by the character of the seabottom around here. Certainly not more than eight hundred I shouldsay." And Tom was right. At seven hundred and eighty-six feet the gaugestopped moving, and a slight jar told all on board that the submarinewas again on the ocean floor.

  "Now to look for the wreck!" exclaimed Tom. "And it will be a realsearch this time. We know we are starting right."

  "Are you going to put on diving suits and walk around looking for her?"asked Ned.

  "No, that would take too long," answered Tom. "We'll just cruise about,beginning with small circles and gradually enlarging them, spiralfashion. We'll have to go up a few feet to get off the bottom."

  As Tom was about to give this order Ned looked from the glass windows.The powerful searchlight had been switched on and its gleamsilluminated the ocean in the immediate vicinity of the craft.

  As was generally the case, the light attracted hundreds of fish ofvarious shapes, sizes, and, since the waters were tropical, beautifulcolors. They swarmed in front of the glass windows, and Ned was glad tonote that there were no large sea creatures, like horse mackerel or bigsharks. Somehow or other, Ned had a horror of big fish. There weresharks in the warm waters, he well knew, but he hoped they would keepaway, even though he did not have to encounter any in the diving suit.

  Slowly the submarine began to move. And as she was being elevatedslightly above the ocean bed, to enable her to proceed, Ned uttered anexclamation and pointed to the windows.

  "Look, Tom!" he cried.

  "What is it?" the young inventor asked.

  "Snakes!" whispered his chum. "Millions of 'em! Out there in the water!Look how they're writhing about!"

  Tom Swift laughed.

  "Those aren't snakes!" he said. "That's serpent grass--a form of verylong seaweed which grows on certain bottoms. It attains a length offifty feet sometimes, and the serpent weed looks a good deal like anest of snakes. That's how it got its name. I didn't know there was anyhere. But we must have dropped down into a bed of it."

  "Any danger?" asked Ned.

  "Not that I know of, only it may make it more difficult for us to seethe wreck of the Pandora."

  As Tom turned to leave the cabin the submarine suddenly ceased moving.And she came to a gradual stop as though she had been "snubbed" by amooring line.

  "I wonder what's the matter!" exclaimed Tom. "We can't have come uponthe wreck so soon."

  At that moment a man entered the cabin.

  "Trouble, Mr. Swift!" he reported.

  "What kind?" asked Tom.

  "Our propellers are tangled with a mass of serpent weed," was theanswer. "They're both fouled, and we can't budge."

  "Bless my anchor chain!" ejaculated Mr. Damon. "Stuck again!"