The Submarine Boys and the Middies Part 3

Farnum.

"Why, sir, I've been sitting so that I could see Jack's arm. I've been reading, from the motions of his right arm, the dots and dashes of the Morse telegraph alphabet."

"You youngsters certainly get me, for the things you think of," laughed the shipyard's owner.

"And the 'Farnum,' or whatever it is, is coming up," called Captain Jack, suddenly. "I just felt my lead slide down over the top of her hull.

Hard-a-starboard, Hal, and row hard," shouted young Benson, breathlessly.

Though Hastings obeyed immediately he was barely an instant too soon. To his dismay, Mr. Farnum saw something dark, unwieldy, rising through the water. It appeared to be coming up fairly under the stern of the sh.o.r.e boat, threatening to overturn the little craft and plunge them all into the icy water.

Hal shot just out of the danger zone, though. Then a round little tower bobbed up out of the water. Immediately afterward the upper third of a long, cigar-shaped craft came up into view, water rolling from her dripping sides, which glistened brightly as the sun came out briefly from behind a fall cloud.

In the conning tower, through the thick plate gla.s.s, the three people in the sh.o.r.e boat made out the carroty-topped head and freckled, good-humored, honest, homely face of Eph Somers. The boat lay on the water, under no headway, drifting slightly with the wind-driven ripples.

Then Eph raised the man-hole cover of the top of the conning tower, thrusting out his head to hail them.

"Hey, you landsmen, do you know a buoy from an umbrella?"

"Do _you_ know the difference between a Sunday-school text and petty larceny?" retorted Jack Benson, sternly. "What do you mean by taking the submarine without leave?"

"I've been experimenting-flirting with science," responded Eph, loftily.

"Say, if you landsmen know a buoy from a banana, get down to the bow moorings of this steel mermaid, and I'll pa.s.s you the bow cable. It's a heap easier to lead this submarine horse out of the stall, single-handed, than it is to take him back and tie him."

Hal rowed easily to the buoy, while Eph, returning to the steering wheel and the tower controls, ran the "Farnum," with just bare headway, up to where he could toss the bow cable to those waiting in the boat. A few moments later the stern cable, also, was made fast, in such a way as to allow a moderate swing to the bulky steel craft.

"Now, you can take me ash.o.r.e, if you feel like it," proposed Eph, standing on the platform deck.

"Not quite yet," returned Skipper Jack, though the small boat lay alongside. "We've got some inspecting to do. But how did you get on board in the first place?"

"Why, the night watchman was in the yard for a few minutes, and I got him to put me on board. I figured I could hail somebody else when I was ready to go on sh.o.r.e."

"But what on earth made you do such a thing?" demanded Captain Jack, in a low tone. "It's really more than you had a right to do, Eph, without getting Mr. Farnum's permission."

"Why, I've known you to take the 'Pollard' and try something when Mr.

Farnum wasn't about," retorted Somers, looking surprised.

"You never knew me to do it when I could ask permission, although, as captain, I have the right to handle the boat. But that leave doesn't extend to all the rest, Eph. What were you doing down there, anyway?"

"Why, I came on board, and left the manhole open for ten minutes,"

answered Somers. "Then I found the cabin thermometer standing at 49 degrees. I wondered how much warmth could be gained by going below the surface. I had been down an hour and five minutes when you began to signal with that sledge-hammer-"

"Sounding-lead," Jack corrected him.

"Well, it sounded like a sledge-hammer, anyway," grinned young Somers.

"While I was down below I found that the temperature rose four degrees."

"Part of that was likely due to the warmth of your body, and the heat of the breath you gave off," hinted Benson.

"You could have gotten it up to eighty or ninety degrees by turning on the electric heater far enough," suggested Hal.

"I wanted to see whether it would be warmer in the depths; wanted to find out how low I could go and be able to do without heat in winter," Somers retorted.

"I could have told you that, from my reading, without any experiment,"

retorted Skipper Jack. "Close your conning tower and go down a little way, and the temperature would gradually rise a few degrees. That's because of the absence of wind and draft. But, if you could go down very, very deep without smashing the boat under the water pressure, you'd find the temperature falling quite a bit."

"Where did you read all that?" inquired Eph, looking both astonished and sheepish.

"Here," replied Jack, going to a small wall book-case, taking down a book and turning several pages before he stopped.

"Just my luck," muttered Eph, disconsolately. "Here I've been dull as ditch-water for an hour, trying to find out something new, and it's all stated in a book printed-ten years ago," he finished, after rapidly consulting the t.i.tle-page.

Jacob Farnum had been no listener to this conversation. Taking the marine gla.s.ses from the conning tower, the shipbuilder was now well forward on the platform deck, scanning what was visible of the steam craft to the southward. At last the yard's owner turned around to say:

"I don't believe you young men can have things ship-shape a second too soon. The craft heading this way has a military mast forward. She must be the 'Hudson.' If there's anything to be done, hustle!"

Jack and Hal sprang below, to scan their respective departments. Five minutes later Grant Andrews hailed from the "Pollard," and Eph rowed over in the sh.o.r.e boat to ferry over the machinists.

Half an hour later Andrews and his men had put in the few needed touches aboard the newer submarine boat. The sun, meanwhile, had gone down, showing the hull of a naval vessel some four miles off the harbor.

Darkness came on quickly, with a clouded sky. As young Benson stepped on deck Grant Andrews followed him.

"All finished here, Grant?" queried the yard's owner.

"Yes, sir. There's mighty little chance to do anything where Hal Hastings has charge of the machinery."

"That's our gunboat out there, I think," went on Mr. Farnum, pointing to where a white masthead light and a red port light were visible, about a mile away.

"Dunhaven must be on the map, all right, if a strange navigating officer knows how to come so straight to the place," laughed Jack Benson.

"Oh, you trust a United States naval officer to find any place he has sailing orders for," returned Jacob Farnum. "I wonder if he'll attempt to come into this harbor?"

"There's safe anchorage, if he wants to do so," replied Captain Jack.

While Somers was busy putting the foreman and the machinists ash.o.r.e, Mr.

Farnum, Jack and Hal remained on the platform deck, watching the approach of the naval vessel, which was now plainly making for Dunhaven.

Suddenly, a broad beam of glaring white light shot over the water, resting across the deck of the "Farnum."

"I guess that fellow knows what he wants to know, now," muttered Benson, blinking after the strong glare had pa.s.sed.

"There, he has picked up the 'Pollard,' too," announced Hastings. "Now, that commander must feel sure he has sighted the right place."

"There go the signal lights," cried Captain Jack, suddenly. "Hal, hustle below and turn on the electric current for the signaling apparatus."

Then Benson watched as, from the yards high up on the gunboat's signaling mast, colored electric lights glowed forth, twinkling briefly in turn.

This is the modern method of signaling by sea at night.

"He wants to know," said Benson, to Mr. Farnum, as he turned, "whether there is safe anchorage for a twelve-hundred-ton gunboat of one hundred and ninety-five feet length."

Reaching the inside of the conning tower at a bound, the young skipper rapidly manipulated his own electric signaling control. There was a low mast on the "Farnum's" platform deck, a mast that could be unstepped almost in an instant when going below surface. So Captain Jack's counter-query beamed out in colors through the night: