"Great guns!" exclaimed Gaines. "What do you suppose did that, Dick?"
"More mysterious things have happened to us since we left Magellan Strait," ruminated Dick, "than ever came our way before. Suppose we haul in on the tow line and have a look at the end of it."
The line was pulled aboard. There were some forty feet of it, and the end was sliced off clean.
"Der vale dit id mit his teet'," asserted Carl, who always hung to one of his own theories like a dog to a bone.
"Bosh, Clackett!" scoffed Gaines. "How could a knife have done that? Who was down there to cut the rope?"
"It don't make any difference what separated the rope," put in Speake, "the thing was done, and something or other is running away with Motor Matt's torpedo. Matt must have wanted that Whitehead or he wouldn't have gone to the trouble to tow it in. Are we going to let it get away from us?"
"We haven't any business taking the _Grampus_ from her anchorage while Matt's ashore," said Gaines.
"I guess Matt wouldn't mind if we took a dive along the bottom of the bay to overhaul that runaway torpedo," remarked Dick.
"Sure, nod!" chimed in Carl. "Matt vill be as madt as some vet hens ven ve tell him der dorpeto skyhooted avay mit itseluf und ve ditn't do nodding to shdop id."
"We'll chance it, anyway, mates," said Dick. "I'm always in command whenever our old raggie is off the boat. Get down to the motor, Gaines. Clackett, get after the tanks. Come below, the rest of you, and let the last man down secure the hatch."
Speake was the last one to drop down the hatch. The ballast tanks were already filling as he stepped off the iron ladder upon the floor of the periscope room.
"Turn on the electric projector, Speake," said Dick. "I'm going up into the tower and do the steering from there."
Dick got just two rounds up the ladder when a muffled roar enveloped the _Grampus_, and she was heaved violently over until the tower was almost on a level with her keel.
Carl, who had been inspecting the periscope, was thrown violently against the rounded wall over the locker. Speake, just reaching up to turn the electric switch that sent a current through the wires of the projector, went head over heels against one of the bulkheads. As for Dick, he pulled off a remarkable stunt at ground and lofty tumbling, winding up with his head under the periscope table and his heels in the air.