It would be pretty difficult to fetch it, we knew, but, if necessary, we could hug the sides of the lake until we located it.

Once outside the tunnel the _Sword_ would rise to the surface and make for St.George at full speed.
"At what depth are we now ?" I asked the lieutenant.
"About a fathom." "It is not necessary to go any lower," I said.

"From what I was able to observe during the equinoctial tides, I should think that we are in the axis of the tunnel." "All right," he replied.
Yes, it was all right, and I felt that Providence was speaking by the mouth of the officer.

Certainly Providence could not have chosen a better agent to work its will.
In the light of the lamp I examined him.

He was about thirty years of age, cool, phlegmatic, with resolute physiognomy--the English officer in all his native impassibility--no more disturbed than if he had been on board the _Standard_, operating with extraordinary _sang-froid,_ I might even say, with the precision of a machine.
"On coming through the tunnel I estimated its length at about fifty yards," he remarked.
"Yes, Lieutenant, about fifty yards from one extremity to the other." This calculation must have been pretty exact, since the new tunnel cut on a level with the coast is thirty-five feet in length.
The order was given to go ahead, and the _Sword_ moved forward very slowly for fear of colliding against the rocky side.
Sometimes we came near enough to it to distinguish a black mass ahead of it, but a turn of the wheel put us in the right direction again.
Navigating a submarine boat in the open sea is difficult enough.