soundings of my own, a depth of over fifty feet 

 with a bottom composed of soft and sandy mud. 

 Feeling secure in my knowledge of the floor I 

 accelerated slightly the speed of the boat. She was 

 running easily, holding to the course with but an 

 occasional turn of the wheel, when with a sudden 

 creaking groan, the already taut towing cable 

 tightened still more around the stern bitt; for an 

 instant she hesitated; at the same instant my hand 

 was on the lever and threw out the clutch. The 

 trawl had struck. But from the continued momen- 

 tum of the moving boat, it appeared that the ob- 

 struction was cleared. This was an error, however, 

 and it soon became manifest. On attempting to 

 proceed under power, the boat labored; then I 

 knew that whatever it was we encountered had 

 been torn loose from the bottom and was being 

 carried along by the net. I closed the throttle and 

 brought the Hippocampus to a stop. 



The shock of this contact, although slightly 

 transmitted to the boat, owing to the elasticity of 

 the two hundred feet of cable, was enough, never- 

 theless, to awaken my Faithful Assistant. With 

 our combined efforts we soon had the trawl with 

 its unknown freight on the way to the surface. 



[223] 



