"Shall we try, sir ?" asked Tom Turner.
"Yes," said Robur.
In the engine-room the engineer and his assistant were at their posts ready to obey the orders signaled to them.

The "Albatross" dropped towards the sea, and remained, about fifty feet above it.
There was no ship in sight--of that the two colleagues soon assured themselves--nor was there any land to be seen to which they could swim, providing Robur made no attempt to recapture them.
Several jets of water from the spout holes soon announced the presence of the whales as they came to the surface to breathe.

Tom Turner and one of the men were in the bow.

Within his reach was one of those javelin-bombs, of Californian make, which are shot from an arquebus and which are shaped as a metallic cylinder terminated by a cylindrical shell armed with a shaft having a barbed point.

Robur was a little farther aft, and with his right hand signaled to the engineers, while with his left, he directed the steersman.