Mystery of Crocodile Island - Carolyn Keene [11]
Bess had scanned the shoreline through binoculars as unobtrusively as possible. She focused on a metal tube sticking out of the water. It seemed to give off bursts of light, as if it were studded with prisms and mirrors reflecting the rays of the sun.
“Hey, see that thing over there? I wonder what it is!” she said, excited.
The others looked and George gasped. “It could be the periscope of a submarine!”
The man shouted,“Get away from this island.”
“What!” Danny exclaimed. For a moment he forgot to keep his engine racing.
Nancy took the binoculars from Bess and trained them on the strange object. “Is the water deep enough for a submarine to get in?”
“Yes,” Danny replied. “Notice that the thing is sticking out of one of the channels where the water is green. That means it’s deep enough for a small sub. As a matter of fact, during World War II enemy subs got in here this way. The government had mined all the larger, more important channels to keep them out, but small enemy craft slipped in anyway.”
“Danny, can you go into the channel?” Nancy asked. “I’d like to see if that really is a periscope.”
“Sure,” Danny said and changed course.
But they soon realized that the men on The Whisper had no intention of letting them go through with their plan.
“They’re coming closer,” George said tensely. “Obviously they don’t want us to check that thing out there.”
“Which proves that they have something to do with it,” Bess added.
Again the other boat pulled alongside the Pirate. “You kids think I’m fooling!” the skipper shouted. “I’m not. If you don’t turn around instantly, your boat is gonna get rammed. And it’ll cost you a pretty penny to have it repaired!”
“But we’re leaving the island,” Danny pointed out. “Just as you told us to!”
“You’re going in the wrong direction. Turn back!”
Danny hesitated. He realized that this time their pursuers meant business. Before he had a chance to pull the wheel around, The Whisper came so close to their skiff that it scraped the bow.
“All right! All right!” Danny cried out. “We’re leaving. You don’t have to damage us.”
The skipper chuckled evilly. “And don’t ever come back. You hear!”
Bess had turned white and sat frozen in her chair, her hands clamped tightly around its edge. Nancy and George realized that the situation was critical and did not object to Danny’s pulling away in the direction the men had indicated.
The Whisper followed them for a while, then turned off. Obviously the men were satisfied that they had chased the intruders away.
“Wow!” Bess said finally. “I don’t want to see those people ever again!”
Nancy grinned. “I do. They’re up to no good, and I’m planning to find out what it is.”
As the Pirate headed toward Key Biscayne, George said, “I wonder who those guys are. Let’s stop at the Coast Guard office and see in whose name The Whisper is registered.”
“We don’t have to do that,” Danny said. “My dad has a book containing all the information. Unless it’s a brand-new entry, it should be in there.”
“I wish we could be sure that we saw a periscope,” Nancy said, still pondering their strange experience.
“How do periscopes work?” Bess asked.
“Oh, I know that because we just had it in school,” Danny volunteered. “You see, the periscope is the eye of the underwater craft. A submarine builder by the name of Simon Lake invented the first good periscope, which was way ahead of the technology and science of his time. He bought a lot of lenses and began to experiment.”
“Not too complicated!” George said.
“Maybe not, but one day he hit upon a lucky combination. He could look down the street and see people walking and wagons rolling through the harbor. He called it an omniscope. It offered enough magnification and clearness of optics even for night vision, so it was a big success.”
“How long ago was that?” George asked.
“Nineteen hundred two,” Danny told her. “Before that they just had makeshift equipment.”
As soon as they arrived at the Cosgrove house, Danny went to get the boat registry. It was large and heavy. He