Into the Abyss (Tom Swift, Young Inventor) by Victor Appleton Page A

all spread out to help me stay bouyant.
    Thankfully, the sea was pretty calm again. Pretty amazing, considering we’d just had a major earthquake and possibly the beginning of a huge tsunami. But that’s how it is with seismic waves—once the source stops shaking, the waves quickly quiet down.
    I wondered how long it would take before someone aboard the
Nestor
realized they’d left me behind. Come to think of it, was the
Nestor
still in one piece, or had she been damaged by the same humongous wave that had thrown me overboard?
    Fortunately, I knew that there was a homing beacon in my life vest—complete with high-intensity light, so that I could be easily located, even in the dark, and could stay comfortably afloat until then.
    Unfortunately, my life vest was still back on board the
Nestor
! I hadn’t worn it since the previous night, when I was out under the stars with Bud, trying tostay vertical on the
Nestor
’s heaving deck.
    What I wouldn’t have given now to be back there, with my feet firmly planted on something—
anything
!
    Anything would be better than floating alone in the middle of the ocean, with nothing on the horizon in any direction.
    Now, I’m a fairly good swimmer. On the school team at Shopton High, I do the four-by-one-hundred-meter medley and the four-hundred-meter freestyle. So if I’d seen the
Nestor
out there, I could have gotten to her. But she was no longer on the horizon.
    Still, I knew she couldn’t be too far away. The captain would try to keep the
Nestor
near the dive site, so they would have a chance to save my dad and the submersibles crew. Once they realized I was gone, they’d deploy a motorized dinghy, one of the two strapped to the
Nestor
’s sides, to find me. I just had to stay afloat long enough to get saved.
    I looked around, and to my great relief, saw that there were several pieces of debris floating not too far from me. I swam for them and grabbed hold of the biggest piece I could reach. It was about six feet square and seemed to have once been part of the wooden hull of a boat. By the looks of it, andthe other pieces floating nearby, it couldn’t have been a very large one—not even close to the size of the
Nestor
. The giant wave must have totally destroyed it.
    I wondered who had been aboard and what had happened to them. Had they all been wearing their life vests? I sure hoped so.
    I hauled myself up out of the water and onto the piece of wreckage. With my full weight on it, it floated only about two inches above the water.
    Well, I had saved myself, at least for the moment. That certainly was worth celebrating. Now, how was I going to get myself
rescued
?
    I could not afford to die like this. I had not forgotten that my dad was in danger. The
Jules Verne-1
was sitting there at the bottom of the sea, probably crippled, with a fairly limited air supply.
    My dad had mentioned an avalanche—at least, that’s what I thought he’d said. Was the submersible buried under a thousand tons of lava rock?
    I knew my dad had left me on board the
Nestor
so that I could take charge in an emergency. He had trusted his life to me. But if I was ever going to save him, I had to save myself first.
    “Q.U.I.P, I need you,” I said to my wristwatch. My
waterlogged
wristwatch.
    Nothing. No response at all.
    The watch is
supposed
to be waterproof, but you never know what that really means. Getting it wet while washing your hands is one thing; submerging the watch in salt water is another.
    I had to get Q.U.I.P. dried out and running again. Using the little ring of mini-tools I always keep in my pants pocket, I took off the back of the watch. I laid both pieces out on the raft, making sure they were secure and didn’t slide into the ocean or get blown away by the breeze.
    The day was already a hot one. The water was calm, and there wasn’t much wind at all. The watch parts dried out pretty quickly in the late morning sun.
    Exhausted, I rested for a while to regain what was left of