Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/310

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302
The Dream Doctor

all over my body, a pounding of the ear-drums, and just a trace of nausea.

Kennedy smiled as I moved about. "Never mind, Walter," he said. "I know how you feel on a first trip. One minute you are choking from lack of oxygen, then in another part of the boat you are exhilarated by too much of it. Still," he winked, "don't forget that it is regulated."

"Well," I returned, "all I can say is that if war is hell, a submarine is war."

I had, however, been much interested in the things about me. Forward, the torpedo-discharge tubes and other apparatus about the little doors in the vessel's nose made it look somewhat like the shield used in boring a tunnel under compressed air.

"Ordinary torpedo-boats use the regular automobile torpedo," remarked Captain Shirley, coming ubiquitously up behind me. "I improve on that. I can discharge the telautomobile torpedo, and guide it either from the boat, as we are now, or from the land station where we were last night, at will."

There was something more than pride in his manner. He was deadly in earnest about his invention.

We had come over to the periscope, the "eye" of the submarine when she is running just under the surface, but of no use that we were below. "Yes," he remarked, in answer to my half-spoken question, "that is the periscope. Usually there is one fixed to look ahead and another that is movable, in order to take in what is on the sides and in the rear. I have both of those. But, in addition, I have the universal periscope, the eye that sees all around, three hundred