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Updated: June 3, 2025
"Ned would do the same for me!" "But hold on!" cried Mr. Hardley. "If you are killed there will be no one to navigate this boat to the place of the wreck! You can't desert this way!" Tom gave the man one look of contempt. "You need have, no fears," he said. "This submarine is under international maritime laws.
Very well, we'll consider that bond canceled. I won't charge you a cent for this trip. But, mark this, Hardley: What I find from now on, is my own! You don't share in it!" "You mean that " "I mean that if I discover the wreck of the Pandora and take the gold from her, that it is all my own. I will share it with Mr. Damon, provided he remains with me "
"Captain's cabin or the purser's strong room, I imagine," Tom answered. "Hardley didn't actually see it, but he said those two places were constantly guarded. I'm inclined to think the purser would have charge of the gold. But we'll try both places." It was easy to learn which had been the commander's cabin. It had the name "Captain" on a brass plate over the door. Tom and Ned entered.
Hardley seemed to recover some of his former manners, once the peril was passed, but his conduct had been a revelation to Mr. Damon. "Tom," said the eccentric man in private to the young inventor, "I'm disgusted with that fellow. I don't see how I was ever bamboozled into taking up his offer." "I don't, either," replied Tom frankly. "But we're in for it now.
Not once did Tom Swift admit to himself that he was going into this scheme because he thought well of it. It was all for Mr. Damon, after Tom had learned that his friend had invested considerable money in a company Mr. Hardley had formed to pay half the expenses of the trip. Tom even tried to buy Mr.
"We are going down now," Tom explained, as he pointed out to Mr. Hardley the various controlling wheels and levers, "by filling our ballast tanks with water. We can rise, when needful, by forcing out this water by means of compressed air. When we are on the ocean we can go down by using our diving rudders, and in much quicker time than by filling our tanks."
Hardley, to use a comprehensive, but perhaps not very elegant expression, may go fish for his share." "That's right!" asserted Mr. Damon. "I guess you're right, Tom," declared Ned. "There's only one more thing to be considered." "What's that?" asked the young inventor. "Why, Hardley himself may find out in some way that we were barking up the wrong tree, so to speak.
"And will you bear me out when I say that if the wreck of a treasure ship could be exactly located in water that is not too deep, half the trouble would be solved?" asked Mr. Hardley. "A good share of it would," answered Tom. "That is usually the chief difficulty locating the wreck. Nearly always they are anywhere from one to five miles from where the persons seeking them think they are.
Sometimes Ned or Mr. Damon went with him, but Mr. Hardley could never be induced to ride in an airship. "I'll travel on the ocean or under it," he said, "but I'm not going to take a chance in the air. I'm too afraid of falling." "Tom, what's this?" asked Ned one day, when he and Tom had come to see how the work of remodeling the submarine was getting along.
Not that I fear we shall be in danger," he hastened to add; "but I think it will prove a failure. However, as Mr. Hardley will bear half the expense, and as by using my own submarine that will not be much, I'll go!" "Then I'll tell him!" exclaimed Mr. Damon. "Hurray! This is great! I haven't had an exciting trip for a long while! Don't tell my wife about it," he begged Tom and Ned.
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