If he rang for speed ahead, Captain Jack knew it might not come swiftly enough to carry his boat and its human load ahead to safety.

In any case, it must be a job of seconds.  If Hal responded slowly to the signal—­then destruction!

All this seemed to flash like lightning through the young commander’s head as he made that leap for the wheel.

Somers being in the way, young Benson flung him violently aside.

Captain Jack’s left hand grasped a spoke of the steering wheel; his right hand signaled violently for speed astern.

Would Hal respond in time to save them all?

CHAPTER XVIII

The findings on the “Thor”

It was a breathless moment.

Captain Jack Benson, resting one hand on the wheel, gazed off at port side with fascinated stare.

Almost instantly a grating could be heard that must have come from the propeller shafts, though the young skipper, at that moment, was incapable of thinking of anything save that tiny fin-line out on the water.

Then the speed ahead of the submarine boat stopped.  In another moment the little steel craft was creeping backward.

On came that fin-line.

There was nothing more that Jack could do, save to hold the wheel rigid.

On for the bow of the “Hastings” came the fin-line.  Would that moving torpedo strike, hurling them all to destruction?

It must have been by a hair’s breath, but that fin-line crossed the bow of the submarine.  It had gone on, beyond—­harmlessly, now!

“What’s that you’re saying, Eph?” demanded Jack.  “Oh, yes; you want to know why I bowled you over in that fashion.  Because there wasn’t time to speak.  I was crazy to get the reverse gear at work, and take us out of the path of that torpedo aimed for us.”

“Torpedo?” demanded Eph Somers, thunderstruck.

“Torpedo?” repeated Jacob Farnum, in bewilderment.

“Yes,” broke in Lieutenant Danvers, stepping forward.  “See, its force is expended, and now it’s floating on the water over there off the starboard bow.”

Jacob Farnum stared at it as though utterly unable to comprehend anything.

“I saw the thing coming our way,” went on the naval officer, hastily, “though not as soon as Benson did.  By the time that I knew it, he was acting.  So I held my peace, for, if Benson had failed—­well, nothing would have mattered much—­then!”

In a few more crisp, swift sentences; Danvers told the rest of it adding: 

“It was Benson’s quick coolness that saved us all from going skyward.”

“No, it wasn’t,” broke in the youthful skipper, decisively.  “It was Hal, who was right by his engines, who saved us.  Had he acted on the signal a second and a half later that torpedo would have struck us plumb and fair.”