through the trap door being
all that was necessary. Wrecks have been examined and valuables
recovered.

[Illustration: SINGING INTO THE TELEPHONE
Part of the entertainment furnished by the telephone newspaper at
Buda-Pest.]

Although the _Argonaut_ travelled over 2,000 miles under water and on
the surface, propelled by her own power, her inventor was not satisfied
with her. He cut her in two, therefore, and added a section to her,
making her sixty-six feet long; this allowed more comfortable quarters
for her crew, space for larger engines, compressors, etc.

It was off Bridgeport, Connecticut, that the new _Argonaut_ did her
first practical wrecking. A barge loaded with coal had sunk in a gale
and could not be located with the ordinary means. The _Argonaut_,
however, with the aid of a device called the "wreck-detector," also
invented by Mr. Lake, speedily found it, sank near it, and also
submerged a new kind of freight-boat built for the purpose by the
inventor. A diver quickly explored the hulk, opened the hatches of the
freight-boat, which was cigar-shaped like the _Argonaut_ and supplied
with wheels so it could be drawn over the bottom, and placed the
suction-tube in position. Seven minutes later eight tons of coal had
been transferred from the wreck to the submarine freight-boat. The
hatches were then closed and compressed air admitted, forcing out the
water, and five minutes later the freight-boat was floating on the
surface with eight tons of coal from a wreck which could not even be
located by the ordinary means.

It is possible that in the future these modern "argonauts" will be
seeking the golden fleeces of the sea in wrecks, in golden sands like
the beaches of Nome, and that these amphibious boats will be ready along
all the dangerous coasts to rush to the rescue of noble ships and wrest
them from the clutches of the cruel sea.

Mr. Lake has also designed and built a submarine torpedo-boat that will
travel on the surface, under the waves, or on the bottom; provided with
both gasoline and electric power, and, fitted with torpedo discharge
tubes, she will be able to throw a submarine torpedo; her diver could
attach a charge of dynamite to the keel of an anchored warship, or she
could do great damage by hooking up cables through her diver's trap door
and cutting them, and by setting adrift anchored torpedoes and submarine
mines.

Thus have Jules Verne's imaginings come true, and the dream _Nautilus,_
wh