Dansitt tried to make a break for it, but Bud sent the sallow youth sprawling headfirst into the pebbles on the beach.
“All right,” Dansitt said as he arose and brushed the sand out of his hair, “you may have us, but that wonderful sub of yours, Tom Swift, is sunk and in deep water too. You’ll never raise it.”
“Don’t be too sure of that!” Tom said. Turning to his father, he added, “We can raise the Sea Dart with that giant electromagnet you invented several years ago, Dad. Don’t you think so?”
“Yes, I believe we can, Tom. Radio Hanson to bring it down here in the Sky Queen and we’ll go to work at once.”
While the others marched the two pirates off to an underground cell, the young inventor hurried to the radio in Chilcote’s laboratory. Quickly contact-204 TOM SWIFT AND HIS JETMARINE
ing Hanson in Shopton, he first told of the pirates’ capture.
“Tom, that’s magnificent!” cried the engineer unbelievingly. “I’ll report this to Admiral Hopkins immediately.”
Tom then reported that the jetmarine had been sunk and requested that the giant magnet be flown to Spaniel Island.
“I’ll start preparations right away,” Hanson promised. “We should reach you by afternoon.”
While the group waited for the magnet’s arrival, they quizzed their three prisoners. At first Chilcote and Dansitt refused to talk, but Wesman, hoping for a light sentence, turned state’s evidence. First he told why the Sea Dart had sunk.
“Dansitt wanted to run it but he didn’t know how,” Wesman said. “He pressed the wrong lever and we hit the bottom nosefirst. Got stuck in the mud. Then Bright Boy here decided we’d better use the escape suits. He left the inner and outer hatches of the compression chamber of your sub open and flooded the interior.”