CHAPTER XIX

A DANGEBOUS MISSION"

'' frank-doesn 't answer!''

Joe and Chet sat white-faced at the radio. The younger Hardy lad, despite his horror al what he now believed to be his brother's fate, remained at his post, earphones glued to hia head. Captain Rankin paced slowly back and forth in the little room, his face drawn.

"Perry will find them, boys. There's still a chance!" he said. Despite his effort to sound reassuring, the man knew that there was little hope of saving either Chipsley or Frank.

Perry's clear-cut bass voice crashed through the earphones. "I'm right alongside the Ka-tawa. Has Frank told you where he is?"

Joe struggled to keep his voice steady. "He -he doesn't answer, Mr. Perry. Please hurry!''

There was a long interval of silence.

"Ha! They'll never see Frank Hardy again, or Perry either!" snorted a large, powerfully-built man seated in an expensive automobile alongside Reed's Point dock.

'' You bet they won't, Mr. Kuntz!'' The thin young man beside him smiled cruelly. "This is one time the Hardys are beaten, eh, Simon I"

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The heavy-set ruffian laughed shrilly. '' Eight, Bock! And all without us doin' a thing!"

"Nice of Mr. Kuntz to bring down his shortwave radio and cut in on all the broadcastin' out there, isn't it, Pete?"

"Shut up, you fellows, they're talking again," interrupted Kuntz, adjusting the radio dial.

"Any trace of them, Mr. Perry?" came a voice in Kuntz's loudspeaker.

'' Not yet, but keep your hopes up,'' the diver could be heard answering. "I can't move as fast as usual with these extra oxygen tanks on my back. Here, I think I've found a clue! I see a-" His voice trailed away in a jumble of static.

"Shucks!" snapped Kuntz. "These radios-!'' Irritably he switched off the machine and picked up a long spyglass.

"Ha! Look at that old barge bounce!" he scoffed, squinting through the eye-piece. '' She '11 pull an anchor now any minute, and that'll be the end of Perry and all the rest of 'em, for sure!"

"Serves 'em right for not lettin' you go down," Bock remarked. "You're the only diver livin' who could have saved 'em in that sea!"

"You're right, for once," agreed the older man with ill-concealed pride. "But I don't do my work for nothing. I get paid-or else!"

The boys on the barge had heard nothing

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from Perry for several minutes. Joe tapped his foot impatiently.

"Serves us right!" Chet was moaning. "Those secret warnings meant what they said, and so did that crazy fellow in the asylum. We should have left the Katawa alone in the first place!"

Joe suddenly started from his chair. "Quiet!" he whispered, tense with excitement. "Mr. Perry has found them!" he shouted. "Captain! Chet! He's found Frank and Chipsley!"

Instantly the others were alert, scarcely daring to breathe lest Joe should miss a word in the earphones.

"He says he saw a smudge against the side of the Katawa and figured the other two had gone up on deck at that point. He found Frank's cable hitched to the rail, and followed it to where they are. He's there now. Wait!"

Joe listened intently for a moment, then un-clamped the phones from his head. "Frank's hanging suspended over a hole in a cabin floor. His cable saved him from falling through. Great Scott!"

"Is-is Frank-all right!" queried Chet, perspiring freely.

"I don't know yet. Mr. Perry's fastening some extra oxygen tanks to his suit," replied the younger Hardy lad, alternately listening in the earphones and reporting Perry's remarks to the others. "He says he can see Chipsley

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lying under some timbers down in the hole. Oh, if only I could help!"

For a moment the elder Hardy lad was too dazed to know where he was. He remembered that he had made a dive, but outside of that, nothing more. Gradually his blurred vision cleared, and he saw a strange looking figure bending over him. He took a deep breath, and it seemed to him that never before had he experienced as wonderful a sensation as that of rich, pure air pouring into his tortured lungs. Almost instantly his head stopped spinning, and he felt a surge of strength throughout his whole body.

The figure beside him looked strangely familiar despite its weird apparel. Then he began to remember things. Here was Perry, of course! Perry had been on his way down to rescue him, and then he had fainted. The lanky diver suddenly straightened and motioned upward.

"Frank?" It was Joe, he realized with a thrill, calling to him in the earphones.

"Hello, Joe. Yes, I'm fine! Never felt better ! No, I 'm not coming up!"

Perry was still gesticulating violently, but Frank shook his head. "Joe, tell Mr. Perry that I won't go up until I've helped him get Chipsley!"

The diver stood still a moment, apparently deceiving Frank's message from Joe. Then he shrugged with a gesture of resignation and

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pointed down at Chipsley, beckoning Frank to follow him.

Deftly the diver maneuvered himself through the doorway, knelt at the brink of the hole, and made fast the end of his cable to a heavy steel hook projecting from the deck at the cabin entrance. He tested it twice, carefully lowering himself down beside the trapped cameraman, who lay motionless. Frank followed his friend as quickly as he dared, and the two bent over the still figure. Chipsley's eyes, behind hi? helmet window-glass, were closed.

Perry worked rapidly. A special device which he had invented for just such an emergency as this enabled him to remove an empty oxygen cylinder and substitute a fresh one without the possibility of admitting water either to the suit or to the cylinder. In a twinkling Chipsley's supply had been replenished.

Frank, meanwhile, had been investigating the wreckage that covered the lower half of the cameraman's body. Not one of the great shattered timbers could he budge.

He happened to glance at Chipsley's face. To his joy he saw that the man's eyes were open.

"Chipsley's conscious!" he exclaimed into his microphone.

"Good!" cried Joe. "Can you move him?"

"Not yet. Mr. Perry's coming over to help me now. He just fastened on Chipsley's oxygen supply."

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The diver moved to Frank's side, and together the two heaved at the topmost timber. It yielded slightly, then stopped. The diver straightened, tapped Frank on the shoulder, and pointed upward.

"Mr. Perry says you must come up, Frank," Joe insisted over the microphone.

Again the stalwart lad ehook his head. '' Tell Mr. Perry I 'm going to stay as long as he does. He can never move this debris alone."

The diver tapped his head significantly and looked at Frank in the manner of a strange sea-monster staring at another of the same species.

"Mr. Perry says he thinks you're crazy, but to go ahead and help him if you insist!" Joe called down.

For some time the two divers worked desperately. Chipsley suddenly closed his eyes as a heavy beam was loosened under the debris. Frank nudged Perry and pointed at the cameraman. The diver nodded, and plunged his hands beneath a mass of seaweed over Chipsley's ankle.

"Mr. Perry says he has found the timber that's causing most of the trouble, Frank. He wants you to put your hands down opposite his."

Perry, with both hands occupied, had been unable to signal his order to Frank. Now the Hardy lad reached in according to Joe's directions and felt the end of a huge block of wood.

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Perry nodded and they both lifted simultane* ously.

Frank thought his back would snap in two, yet he struggled desperately. He knew that failure to free Chipsley very soon would mean that the cameraman's leg would have to be amputated. The lad's strength seemed to be melting into nothingness, when suddenly the timber gave way and rolled slowly from them. Chipsley's leg was freed!

The cameraman, weakened almost to the point of helplessness by his ordeal, had to be pulled up through the opening at the end of Perry's extra cable. Then, when the trio stood precariously on the vessel's tilted deck, Perry lashed Frank and Chipsley together. Miraculously he produced a third cable, knotted at intervals, and attached one end to a deck ring. He gave the coil to Frank.

"Frank?" came Joe's voice again.

"Yes?"

"There's something wrong with Chipsley's inflation valve," he said, "so Mr. Perry has lashed you two together. You'll have to carry him up.''

"Right. We're ready."

Perry waited a moment, testing the lashing several times, and taking one or two extra turns with the cable. Then he stepped back and nodded to Frank.

There was a muffled hiss of inrushing air as the older Hardy lad turned his valve, and the

170 The Secret Warning

two gently soared upward. Perry waved, an<? gradually faded away into the perpetual night of the ocean bottom.

"Frank! Chipsley says it was the treasure room he fell into!'' Joe cried excitedly into his brother's earphones when the ascending divers made their first halt. "Says he has a picture of the whole thing. The location of some diamonds, too!"

Frank was skeptical. "He must have found a lot more than Mi-. Perry and I did," he laughed. "I didn't see anything but seaweed and wreckage down there!''

It was like a strange dream, this talking back and forth through a radio while suspended in the black, silent waters.

"Chipsley claims that he has a special X-ray lens on his camera that won't stop at little things like seaweed and mud. He says that if there's any gold under all the muss in that room his camera has recorded it.''

"Well, we'll be up before long and find out," Frank returned. "Get the photographic room ready now, Joe, and we'll develop the pictures just as soon as we're back on deck."

After what seemed an eternity the inky blackness of the water gradually merged into a deep brown, then finally into a green. Suddenly, before Frank realized how close they were to the surface, a burst of light struck him. At the same instant something picked them up and flung them high into the air.

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Frank rubbed his hands over his helmet glass. To his astonishment he and Chipsley, lashed together, were riding the crest of a mountainous wave.

'' There they are!'' cried Joe, who had been on the lookout.

It was a hazardous undertaking to lower a boat and proceed to the rescue. Captain Rankin picked eight of his stoutest sailors for the task, which occupied nearly half an hour. Chipsley, who was too exhausted to speak, suddenly col-, lapsed on deck.

"Put him in the compression chamber quick!" ordered Captain Rankin. "Frank, you'll have to go in too. Both of you young men were below the surface far too long for your own good, although I'm certainly thankful that you returned!"

" So am I!" said the older Hardy lad weakly, trying to grin. "Joe, do a good job on those pictures. Chipsley may have found something after all."

While Frank and the cameraman were being taken below deck to the giant compression cylinder, Joe and Chet went to the developing room. They opened Chipsley's camera and removed a large roll of exposed film.

Would the pictures reveal any of the Ka-tawa's secrets?