"As usual," observed Dick, "that head of yours has been working, old ship, while the rest of us have been wondering what you were trying to do. I don't think you'll catch up with that piece of drift."
"Nor I," Matt answered, getting to his feet and coming aft. "Whatever that was, I suspect we'll never be able to discover, so my guess will have to stand. Put her on the starboard tack, Speake," he added to the man in the conning tower.
The submarine once more resumed her course toward Arauco Bay and Lota.
"You fellows go below and turn in," Matt went on to Dick and Carl. "I can con the ship, all right, and there's no need of the two of you staying awake and helping me on the lookout."
"You'd better let Glennie relieve you, mate," suggested Dick. "You've been on deck duty for six hours."
"I'm going to stay right here," said Matt, "until we get safely into Arauco Bay."
There was no use arguing with Motor Matt when he made up his mind that duty commanded him to do a certain thing, and Dick and Carl wished him luck and went below.
Ensign Glennie was lying on the locker in the periscope room.
"You shifted the course," said he, rising on one elbow and peering at Dick and Carl as they dropped off the iron ladder. "What was up?"
"Somet'ing mit a shiny headt vent past us," replied Carl, dropping down on a stool and beginning to draw off his shoes.
"Something with a shiny head?" queried the nonplused ensign.
"I'm by," answered Dick, shaking his head. "I've seen a good many queer things afloat, but that was the queerest. It was too dark to see much, though. Mayhap if we'd had a little more light, we could have made a closer examination and the mystery would have been explained."
Thereupon he went into details, telling Glennie all that he and Carl knew.
"Can you make anything out of it, Glennie?" Dick finished.
"I'm over my head, like the rest of you," answered the ensign. "Probably Matt hit it off pretty well when he said it was a bit of water-logged drift, floating between two waves, with spikes cutting the water and throwing off gleams of phosphorescence. This part of the Pacific is full of cross-currents. And it's a mighty dangerous stretch of water, too, I'm telling you. Matt is certainly anxious to reach Lota, or he'd never persist in pushing through waters like these in such a fog."