All this was well enough, but it gave place to a different order of things when we sighted the Good-win light, and from that moment a real and vital anxiety took the place of a happy indifference.
Black would be often on deck now, judging every ship upon the horizon and careful to be detected by none if it could be helped. Our course carried us almost as far south as Cape Grisnez, and this being out of the track of steamers, either from London or the German ports, we were able to "keep our heads above water," as Osbart put it, and we rarely dived but upon an urgent necessity. So simple did it all appear, that I thought our escape as good as made, when, without any warning whatever, at a quarter to twelve o'clock on the third day after we left the Humber, I heard the alarm bells ringing all over the ship, and instantly knew that the hour of crisis was at hand.
I say it was a quarter to twelve o'clock. I had left Osbart and the Captain in the saloon but ten minutes earlier, and was still but half undressed when the alarm rang out. Running down the corridor, and dragging on my pea-jacket as I went, I tried to gain the platform by the iron ladder amidships; but I found the hatch tight down, and the red lamp, indicating danger, shining . clear below it. Already the ship was full of that heavy air which accompanied a descent to the depths, and I could hear the water hissing in the tanks which sank her. I knew that we must have gone down with unusual rapidity; and when I met Jack-o'-Lantern at the ladder's foot he told me in a breath that we had run slap upon a fleet of submarines not five miles from Cape Grisnez, and that God Almighty alone could keep us out of their clutches.
"The Captain's in the tower," he said; "he'll be expecting you there, sir."
"And Doctor Osbart?" I asked him.
"Oh," says he, "the Doctor's right all through, sir, when his headlights aren't set on the English shore—you'll find him with the Captain, sir——"
I waited for no more, but ran along the passage; and hammering upon the lower hatch, by which you enter the conning-tower from the hold of the ship, gained admittance immediately and climbed to Black's side. Jack-o'-Lantern had spoken of the danger with such emphasis that I quite expected to find the Captain in a bad way and Osbart no better; but, when they invited me to come up, a cooler pair of men could not have been found afloat. For the matter of that, Black himself had just offered Osbart one of his "six-inch" torpedoes, as we called the famous cigars, and the Doctor was in the very act of striking a light as I came in. So I was quite unprepared for the spectacle my eyes beheld when I looked out through the glass of the tower, and discovered all the water turned to gold, as though a thousand lamps shone out at the bottom of the sea. Such a thing I do believe no man had ever seen since the beginning of the world, and I could but stand and gaze spellbound, while Black watched me curiously with the vain eyes of a man who knows his mastery.
"What is it, Captain?" I asked, finding my tongue at last. "What are we doing, and what do those lights mean?" He answered me immediately, pleased, I think, to speak of the Zero.
"Why, boy," says he, "this is a little bit of a party we're giving to the fishes, and those are the lamps to show our friends the way. Keep your weather eye open and you'll see more things than your philosophy ever dreamed of—and see 'em inside five minutes. Yonder, I may tell you, is the submarine Plongeur, which has come all the way from Cherbourg to pay her respects. There are a couple more behind her, and as many up above to do the honours when we peg out. Now, watch while Black has a word to say to them, for they'll remember it, by ——."
His figure became erect and stern instantly; the eyes flashed fire—I knew that I had found again the Captain Black of the Nameless Ship. As for the Doctor, a frenzy of courage appeared to have come upon him, and he stood like a statue, devouring the scene and consumed by that lust of cruelty which ever had mastered him at such moments. The very ferocity of it set me shuddering. I drew back and watched the thing, afraid to speak, but fascinated as I had never been in all my life. Imagine the depths of the sea shining with such a glorious iridescence that every drop of water might have been a diamond upon which the sun of day had turned its most precious beams. Say, that down there, upon the very bed of the Channel, that Channel over which you have looked so often from Dover or Folkestone or the southern ports, down there monstrous lamps were creating a fairy scene more beautiful than any of which man had dreamed through the ages. Do this and you will be able to stand with me in the conning-tower of the Zero and to witness that fearful encounter, when Death hovered about our ship and the lives of all hung upon a thread.
Light, I say, was my first impression of that magic moment, and, upon light, a vision of danger so real that my heart seemed to stand still as I realized it. There, right ahead of us, and clear to be seen in the golden water, was the gleaming shape of a submarine, looking for all the world like a gigantic fish of aspect most terrible. In five seconds, or ten, we should plunge into the jaws of this monster, and it would engulf us. No miracle, I thought, could avert that swift catastrophe—and yet, instantly, with the swiftness of light, Black had averted it, and we had shot upward as a stone from a sling, rising above our enemy and sinking as swiftly in ironic challenge. A moment later, and we had swung about to face the ship again; but this time she was not alone, and another hovered above her. Following Black's glance to the port upon the starboard side. I perceived the third of the French submarines creeping upon us from that quarter, and I said that we were surely doomed. It was at this moment that the great projectors ceased to light the scene, and black darkness enveloped us.
Remember that I knew little hitherto of the genius of that wonderful engineer, Guichard, or of the magic of his ship. I did not know that she could shoot up from the depths with amazing swiftness or sink as rapidly. But now I came to learn that this power was among her qualities, and that upon it Black relied chiefly for his safety. No sooner were our lamps out than we rose to the surface of the Channel, as a swimmer whose breath is failing him. From the blackness of deep waters we passed to the vision of the still sea and of the coastwise lights shining distantly above the white cliffs of France. Ships appeared upon a far horizon and nearer to us, the submarines waiting for their fellows to rise. We had passed, in a sense, from hell to heaven; but I knew that we were but at the beginning of it, and I watched Black's every gesture as he stood immobile at the glass and surveyed the scene with shining eyes.
Of what was he thinking? Of a turn of destiny which would have sent us headlong to death had he but mistimed his acts by a single instant? Or was this wholly the Black of old time, dauntless before his enemies and relentless when they pursued him? His face seemed to say that the latter was nearer the truth than the former. The lust of battle was upon him. I believe he would not have turned back if all the navies of Europe had been waiting there in the Channel to destroy him.
"Stand by to the tubes!" The order rang out in clarion tones as he took up the speaking-tube and hailed the watch below. I heard a sound of men moving swiftly in the depth of the ship, and perceived in the same moment that the two submarines were coming at us headlong. Black laughed aloud when he saw them, but the Doctor's face had grown ashen in an instant, and he clutched at the brass rail behind him as though to fend off the shock of the inevitable collision.
"Done for, by ——," he cried. The words were hardly uttered when the Zero began to race backward away from the ships and straight toward the French shore.
It was the ruse of ten seconds, for she had not gone a hundred yards when she stopped as though a cable held her, and plunging forward once more, she dived under the very bows of the leading submarine and was down at the bottom of the sea before a man could have counted ten.
"Well done, Guichard, well done!" cried the Captain as the Zero touched the soft sand and our projectors, shining out suddenly, made of it a carpet of gold. The Doctor, in his turn, muttered some words