Our carriage followed a rough and little used road along the borders
of the lake; and as we toiled along, Arthur Wells told me, what he
had learned.

Less than two days before, on the afternoon of July twenty-seventh
Wells had been riding on horseback toward the town of Herly. Five
miles outside the town, he was riding through a little wood, when he
saw, far up across the lake, a submarine which rose suddenly above
the waves. He stopped, tied his horse, and stole on foot to the edge
of the lake. There, from behind a tree he had seen with his own eyes
seen this submarine advance toward him, and stop at the mouth of
Black Rock Creek. Was it the famous machine for which the whole world
was seeking, which thus came directly to his feet?

When the submarine was close to the rocks, two men climbed out upon
its deck and stepped ashore. Was one of them this Master of the
World, who had not been seen since he was reported from Lake
Superior? Was this the mysterious "Terror" which had thus risen from
the depths of Lake Erie?

"I was alone," said Wells. "Alone on the edge of the Creek. If you
and your assistants, Mr. Strock had been there, we four against two,
we would have been able to reach these men and seize them before they
could have regained their boat and fled."

"Probably," I answered. "But were there no others on the boat with
them? Still, if we had seized the two, we could at least have learned
who they were."