"More likely the sea has begun to fall," growled Captain Arms.
"Do you know where we are?" asked Cosmo.
"We can"t be anywhere but on the top of Monte Lauro," replied the captain.
"But that"s only three thousand feet high."
"It"s exactly three thousand two hundred and thirty feet," said the captain. "I haven"t navigated the old Mediterranean a hundred times for nothing."
"But even then we should have near seven hundred and fifty feet to spare, allowing for the draft of the Ark, and a slight subsidence of the water."
"Well, you haven"t allowed enough, that"s plain," said the captain.
"But it"s impossible that the flood can have subsided more than seven hundred feet already."
"I don"t care how impossible it is--here we are! We"re stuck on a mountain-top, and if we don"t leave our bones on it I"m a porpoise."
By this time the _Jules Verne_ was alongside, and De Beauxchamps shouted up:
"I was running twenty feet under water, keeping along with the Ark, when my light suddenly revealed the mountain ahead. I hurried up and tried to warn you, but it was too late."
"Can"t you go down and see where we"re fast?" asked Cosmo.
"Certainly; that"s just what I was about to propose," replied the Frenchman, and immediately the submersible disappeared.
After a long time, during which Cosmo succeeded in allaying the fears of his pa.s.sengers, the submersible reappeared, and De Beauxchamps made his report. He said that the Ark was fast near the bow on a bed of sh.e.l.ly limestone.
He thought that by using the utmost force of the _Jules Verne_, whose engines were very powerful, in pushing the Ark, combined with the backing of her own engines, she might be got off.
"Hurry up, then, and get to work," cried Captain Arms. "This flood is on the ebb, and a few hours more will find us stuck here like a ray with his saw in a whale"s back."
De Beauxchamps"s plan was immediately adopted. The _Jules Verne_ descended, and pushed with all her force, while the engines of the Ark were reversed, and within fifteen minutes they were once more afloat.
Without waiting for a suggestion from Cosmo Versal, the Frenchman carefully inspected with his searchlight the bottom of the Ark where she had struck, and when he came to the surface he was able to report that no serious damage had resulted.
"There"s no hole," he said, "only a slight denting of one of the plates, which will not amount to anything."
Cosmo, however, was not content until he had made a careful inspection by opening some of the manholes in the inner skin of the vessel. He found no cause for anxiety, and in an hour the Ark resumed its voyage eastward, pa.s.sing over the site of ancient Syracuse.
By this time a change of the wind had sent the smoke from Etna in their direction, and now it lay thick upon the water, and rendered it, for a while, impossible to see twenty fathoms from the bridge.
"It"s old Etna"s dying salute," said Cosmo. "He won"t have his head above water much longer."
"But the flood is going down," exclaimed Captain Arms.
"Yes, and that puzzles me. There must have been an enormous absorption of water into the interior, far greater than I ever imagined possible.
But wait until the nucleus of the nebula strikes us! In the meantime, this lowering of the water renders it necessary for us to make haste, or we may not get over the mountains round Suez before the downpour recommences."
As soon as they escaped from the smoke of Etna they ran full speed ahead again, and, keeping well south of Crete, at length, one morning they found themselves in the lat.i.tude and longitude of Alexandria.
The weather was still superb, and Cosmo was very desirous of getting a line on the present height of the water. He thought that he could make a fair estimate of this from the known elevation of the mountains about Sinai. Accordingly they steered in that direction, and on the way pa.s.sed directly over the site of Cairo.
Then the thought of the pyramids came to them all, and De Beauxchamps, who had come aboard the Ark, and who was always moved by sentimental considerations, proposed that they should spend a few hours here, while he descended to inspect the condition in which the flood had left those mighty monuments.
Cosmo not only consented to this, but he even offered to be a member of the party. The Frenchman was only too glad to have his company. Cosmo Versal descended into the submersible after instructing Captain Arms to hover in the neighborhood.
The pa.s.sengers and crew of the Ark, with expressions of anxiety that would have pleased their subject if he had heard them, watched the _Jules Verne_ disappear into the depths beneath.
The submersible was gone so long that the anxiety of those aboard the Ark deepened into alarm, and finally became almost panic. They had never before known how much they depended upon Cosmo Versal.
He was their only reliance, their only hope. He alone had known how to keep up their spirits, and when he had a.s.sured them, as he so often did, that the flooding would surely recommence, they had hardly been terrified because of their unexpressed confidence that, let come what would, his great brain would find a way out for them.
Now he was gone, down into the depths of this awful sea, where their imaginations pictured a thousand unheard-of perils, and perhaps they would never see him again! Without him they knew themselves to be helpless. Even Captain Arms almost lost his nerve.
The strong good sense of Amos Blank alone saved them from the utter despair that began to seize upon them as hour after hour pa.s.sed without the reappearance of the _Jules Verne_.
His experience had taught him how to keep a level head in an emergency, and how to control panics. With King Richard always at his side, he went about among the pa.s.sengers and fairly laughed them out of their fears.
Without discussing the matter at all, he convinced them, by the simple force of his own apparent confidence, that they were worrying themselves about nothing.
He was, in fact, as much alarmed as any of the others, but he never showed it. He started a rumor, after six hours had elapsed, that Cosmo himself had said that they would probably require ten or twelve hours for their exploration.
Cosmo had said nothing of the kind, but Blank"s prevarication had its intended effect, and fortunately, before the lapse of another six hours, there was news from under the sea.
And what was happening in the mysterious depths below the Ark? What had so long detained the submersible?
The point where the descent was made had been so well chosen that the _Jules Verne_ almost struck the apex of the Great Pyramid as it approached the bottom. The water was somewhat muddy from the sands of the desert, and the searchlight streamed through a yellowish medium, recalling the "golden atmosphere" for which Egypt had been celebrated.
But, nevertheless, the light was so powerful that they could see distinctly at a distance of several rods.
The pyramid appeared to have been but little injured, although the tremendous tidal wave that had swept up the Nile during the invasion of the sea before the downpour began had scooped out the sand down to the bed-rock on all sides.
Finding nothing of particular interest in a circuit of the pyramid, they turned in the direction of the Great Sphinx.
This, too, had been excavated to its base, and it now stood up to its full height, and a terrible expression seemed to have come into its enigmatic features.
Cosmo wished to get a close look at it, and they ran the submersible into actual contact with the forepart of the gigantic statue, just under the mighty chin.
While they paused there, gazing out of the front window of the vessel, a bursting sound was heard, followed by a loud crash, and the _Jules Verne_ was shaken from stem to stern. Every man of them threw himself against the sides of the vessel, for the sound came from overhead, and they had an instinctive notion that the roof was being crushed down upon them.
A second resounding crash was heard, shaking them like an earthquake, and the little vessel rolled partly over upon its side.
"We are lost!" cried De Beauxchamps. "The Sphinx is falling upon us! We shall be buried alive here!"
A third crash came over their heads, and the submersible seemed to sink beneath them as if seeking to avoid the fearful blows that were rained upon its roof.
Still, the stout curved ceiling, strongly braced within, did not yield, although they saw, with affright, that it was bulged inward, and some of the braces were torn from their places. But no water came in.
Stunned by the suddenness of the accident, for a few moments they did nothing but cling to such supports as were within their reach, expecting that another blow would either force the vessel completely over or break the roof in.