“Thank God you are alive, Jack, old chum!” Ted was murmuring, with glad tears brimming from his eyes.

Jack strove to raise himself on one elbow but fell back limply, weak from the terrible struggle through which he had passed.

“How about ’Little Mack’?” he managed finally to ask faintly.

“Alive but yet unconscious,” replied Ted, “They have gotten most of the water out of his lungs and are using the pulmotor.”

Jack closed his eyes again and murmured a prayer of thanks for his safe deliverance and for the life of his lieutenant.

“Was the Dewey damaged by the mine explosion?” he asked.

Ted replied that so far as could be determined no serious damage had been inflicted, although Officer Cleary had expressed some apprehension as to the condition of the port seams forward on the under side of the hull.  The examination was still in progress.

For an hour Jack rested quietly in his bunk.  The Dewey had submerged after taking aboard the half-drowned commander and his rescuer, and at a safe depth gotten safely out of the zone of danger.  Now she had come to the surface again for further examination of her hull.

Jack and Ted were conversing in low tones, when Bill Witt stumbled along the passageway leading into the men’s quarters and stopped beside Jack.  His face was stern.

“What’s the matter, Bill—–­you seasick?” queried Ted.

“Wish that’s all it was,” muttered Bill.

“Tell us, what’s up?” pressed Ted.

“Isn’t very cheery news for a fellow knocked out like Jack after making such a plucky fight for his life and saving his lieutenant,” answered Bill with a shrug of his broad shoulders.

Jack smiled.

“If I survived that, I guess I can hear what’s troubling you,” was his reply.

“Well, it’s bad news, boys—–­mighty bad,” went on Bill.  “Chief Engineer Blaine reports a leak in the main oil reservoir to starboard.  That mine explosion loosened up the seams and the fuel stuff is slowly but steadily streaming into the deep blue sea!”

CHAPTER IX

VIVE LA FRANCE!

Ted ran aft to the engine room to get a fuller report on the new danger that confronted the Dewey.  There he found that what Bill Witt had said was only too true.  Either portions of the flying steel from the exploded mine had punctured the skin of the submarine, or else the plates had been loosened by the detonation.  The oil was leaking away at an alarming rate and there was no way here in the open sea to get at the leak.  The Dewey would have to go into drydock before the repairs could be made.

“But we can navigate with our batteries, can’t we?” Ted inquired of Sammy Smith, who had come out of the wireless room to better acquaint himself with the Dewey’s newest tale of woe.

Sammy was not at all comforting.