“I see it all, now,” cried the hermit, “the submarine, the strange disappearances, the messages in the water.  They have a secret harbor under those cliffs, with an entrance beneath the water line.”

Hastily he wrote a note on a piece of paper.

“Send one of your men to my headquarters with that,” he said, handing it to Woodward to read: 

Rodgers,—­Send new submarine telescope by bearer.  You will find it in case No. 17, closet No. 3.—­Arnold.

“Right away,” nodded Woodward, comprehending and calling a soldier whom he dispatched immediately with hurried instructions.  The soldier saluted and left almost on a run.

Then Woodward turned and with Arnold lead the men up the shore, still conferring on the best means of attacking the harbor.

On a wharf along the shore Woodward, Arnold and the soldiers gathered, waiting for the telescope.  Already Woodward had had a fast launch brought up, ready for use.

. . . . . . .

When Woodward, Arnold and the attacking party had discovered me unconscious in Del Mar’s study, there had been no time to wait for me to regain full consciousness.  They had placed me on a couch and run into the secret passageway after Elaine.

Now, however, I slowly regained my senses and, looking about, vaguely began to realize what had happened.

My first impulse was to search the study, looking in all the closets and table drawers.  In a corner was a large chest, I opened it.  Inside were several of the queer helmets and suits which I had seen Del Mar use and one of which he had placed on Elaine.

For some moments I examined them curiously, wondering what their use could be.  Somehow it seemed to me, if Del Mar had used them in the escape, we should need them in the pursuit.

Then my eye fell on the broken panel.  I entered it and groped cautiously down the passageway.  At the end I gazed about, trying to discover which way they had all gone.

At last, down on the shore, before a wharf I could see Woodward, the strange old hermit and the rest.

I ran toward them, calling.

. . . . . . .

By this time the soldier who had been sent for the submarine telescope arrived at last, with the telescope in sections in several long cases.

“Good!” exclaimed the old hermit, almost seizing the package which the soldier handed him.

He unwrapped it and joined the various sections together.  It was, as I have said, a submarine telescope, but after a design entirely new, differing from the ordinary submarine telescope.  It had an arm bent at right angles, with prismatic mirrors so that it was not only possible to see the bottom of the sea but by an adjustment also to see at right angles, or, as it were, around a corner.

It was while he was joining this contrivance together that I came up from the end of the secret passage down to the wharf.