“Glory!” he shouted, jubilantly.  “It’s true.  I can see the stars.”

At that moment the bell rang for turning on the gasoline motor.  Within a few seconds the big engines were throbbing.  Again the propeller shafts began to turn.  Now, all hands could feel the motion as the “Pollard” skimmed lazily along over the ocean’s surfaces.

As Eph came down, Jack Benson stepped up, with a light heart, now that the submarine had responded to the last and most important of its tasks.  He stood beside the wheel, ready to take it whenever Mr. Pollard should give it up.

Yes, indeed; there was the sky overhead.  And, with this glimpse of heaven’s arch Jack Benson found himself forever done with submarine fever in the matter of the ordinary risk and dreads.

As yet only the conning tower was out of water.  The platform deck would not emerge until Mr. Farnum, below, employed much of the remaining compressed air for expelling the last gallons of sail water from the tanks.

“What’s that off the starboard bow?” wondered Jack.  “Stop, Mr. Pollard.  Reverse!  I’m sure there’s something over yonder worth stopping to look into.”

David Pollard stopped the speed, then reversed sufficiently to correct the headway, although he replied: 

“I don’t see anything, Benson.  You’ve been below so long that up here, in less light, you’re a victim of shadows.”

But Jack, who had snatched the marine glasses from the rack, and was using them, retorted: 

“The shadows I see, Mr. Pollard, are human shadows, clinging to something in the water, and that something must be an overturned craft of some sort.”

“Let me have the glasses,” requested Mr. Pollard.

After taking a long look the inventor replied, excitedly: 

“Benson, you’re right.  There are some human beings in distress over yonder.  Thank heaven, we didn’t go by them.”

For the first time that night David Pollard turned on the powerful searchlight, projecting abroad, brilliant ray off the starboard bow.  The bottom of a hull about forty feet long, presumably that of a sloop, was what David Pollard now saw.  Clinging to it were two men.  One of them appeared to be middle-aged, the other much younger.  The overturned boat was some three hundred yards distant.

“What have you stopped for?  What’s up?” called up Mr. Farnum.

“Wreck, sir.  Two men in distress,” Jack answered.

“We’ll go close and contrive to take them off,” announced the inventor.  Turning on slow speed, he swung the “Pollard’s” prow about, making for the wreck.

“You youngsters had better get out on deck, with lines to heave,” suggested Mr. Pollard.  So Jack called up Hal and Eph.  After Benson had stepped out on the platform deck Hal passed out three long, light lines.

Up to within a hundred feet of the wreck ran the submarine boat, then stopped, lying parallel with the capsized craft.