. If we could take this up above and exhibit it in some city park
it would make a hit all right," answered the young inventor.

They were walking on the pure, white, sandy floor of the ocean, some
seven hundred feet below the surface, protected from the awful pressure
of the water by means of the specially constructed suits which Tom had
invented. About them, growing as if in a garden, were great masses of
coral, some so thin and sinuous that it waved as do palms and ferns in
the open air. Other coral was in great rock masses.

Then, too, there was the unpleasant serpent weed. It did not grow all
over, but in patches here and there, as rank grass springs up in a
meadow.

And it had been the misfortune of the M. N. 1 that she poked her tail
into a mass of this long, tough grass, which was now wound about her
propellers.

In addition to the many wonderful vegetable forms that grew on the
ocean floor, some rivalling in beauty the orchids of the tropics, and
almost as delicate, there were the fishes, which darted to and fro, now
swiftly swimming beneath some coral arch, and again poising around some
mass of waving sea fronds.

"Well, let's get busy," called Tom to Ned through the telephone. "We
want to free the propellers and find the wreck of the Pandora. She may
be a hundred feet from us, or a mile away, and in that case it's going
to take longer to locate her."

Together they walked to the stern of the disabled craft. One look at
the propeller shafts, the examination being made by the diffused glow
from the searchlight, as well as from the electric torches carried,
showed that the diagnosis of the trouble was correct.

Wound around both propellers was a mass of the serpent weed, tightly
bound because the machinery had whirled it around and around after the
grass had once been caught. It was almost as bad as though manila cable
had been thus accidentally fastened.

"Well, might as well begin to cut it loose," said Tom to his
companions. "Koku, you take the port propeller, and Ned and I will work
on the other. You ought to be able to beat us at this game."

"Me do," said the giant, as he got his axe ready for work.

Blows struck in water lose much of their force. This can easily be
proved by filling a bathtub full of water, rolling up the sleeves, and
then taking a hammer in the hand, immersing it fully, and trying to
strike some object held in the other hand. The water hampers the blows.

It was this way wit