"Same old straight course, eh, lad?" asked Jack quietly.
"You know it," retorted Eph.
"Then we're where we ought to be," responded Jack Benson, bending
forward. With his right hand on the speed control he shut off speed.
"Now, just sit where you are, Eph, until I come up again," advised the
young commander.
"Going to the surface?" demanded Somers, with interest.
"Pretty close," nodded Benson.
Calling Mr. Pollard to his aid, Jack began to operate the machinery that
admitted compressed air to the water tanks, expelling the water
gradually from those same tanks. This was the means by which the
submarine boat rose to the surface. All the time that he was doing this,
Jack Benson kept his keen glance on the submersion gauge. At last he
stopped.
"How is it up there, Eph?" he called, pleasantly.
"Why, of course there's a lot of good daylight filtering down through the
water now," Somers admitted.
Captain Jack went nimbly up the spiral stairway. Now, he had still
another piece of apparatus to call into play. This affair is known to
naval men as the periscope.
In effect, the periscope is a device which in the main is like a pipe;
it can be pushed up through the top of the conning tower, through a
special, water-proof cylinder, until the top of the periscope is a foot,
or less, above the surface of the water.
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