“Tom, we made it!” Bud shouted as the Sea Dart cleared the seaweed and rose higher into the dense green sea.
“Now I think it’s safe to shoot some air into our ballast tanks,” Tom said.
“Okay, skipper.”
In a few seconds the submarine, buoyed by the charge of air, rushed toward the surface. When it broke through the waves, Bud threw open the hatch.
“Boy, that blue sky looks good to me!” he exclaimed.
“No time for daydreaming,” Tom replied. “If we don’t hurry, the pirates will reach Spaniel Island ahead of us. We’ve got to get these ports cleared pronto.”
144 TOM SWIFT AND HIS JETMARINE
Tom opened a locker and hauled out two pairs of goggles and diving fins.
Quickly the boys got into their swimming trunks, pulled the fins over their feet, adjusted the goggles, and dived in. Both were excellent underwater swimmers and had the weeds removed from the intake ports within ten minutes.
As soon as they had rested a bit, Tom set his atomic pile in action again and submerged to periscope depth, and once more headed for Spaniel Island.
Within an hour darkness began to settle over the sea. Bud was amusing himself by tuning in to various radio programs and signals being received by their powerful equipment.
“Keep your ears open for a message from home, will you, Bud?” Tom asked.
“Don’t forget it will be scrambled, but we can run it through our code machine.”
During the next half-hour, Bud picked up several scrambled messages, but after feeding them to the machine, he realized that they were not in the Swifts’