The Submarine Boys Lightning Cruise | Page 7

now something more than four feet draught, with less than two feet of freeboard.
Two of the workmen, in an old whaleboat, waited to row the party out to the "Hastings." Jack was soon able to welcome Lieutenant Danvers on board the submarine.
"You can look around all you want, Ewald and Biffens," suggested Mr. Danvers, "and see if you can find any great differences between this craft and the 'Pollard' and the 'Farnum.'"
The two sailors, accordingly, made themselves wholly at home in the interior of the submarine.
"Both men have put in tours of duty on the first two boats turned out by your company," explained the officer. "They know all about the two Pollard boats that the Navy bought."
"Then they won't find very much that is different on board the 'Hastings,'" Jack replied. "All that is new here is in the way of a few more up-to-date little mechanisms and devices. A man used to running the old 'Pollard' would really be wholly at home here."
A few minutes, only, were allowed for inspection of the newest submarine of the lot. By this time the workmen in the small boat had made fast a towing hawser between the bow of the old scow and the stern towing bitts of the "Hastings."
"Use my men all you need to, in casting off, or in boat handling generally," requested Lieutenant Danvers. Jack therefore ordered Ewald and Biffens forward on the upper hull to cast loose from moorings. Hal stood the trick in the engine-room, while Jack himself sat at the wheel in the tower.
In another minute, despite her rather heavy tow, the "Hastings" was nosing briskly out of the harbor. The gasoline engines this little craft were of a "heavy service" pattern, which adapted the submarine to the work of towing at need.
"How far out do you want to go, sir!" asked Captain Jack, as the Navy lieutenant took a seat beside him in the tower, after Eph and the sailors had gone below.
"We want to be sure to be well out of the path of coastwise vessels," replied Danvers. "That's the main thing, you know. We can't take any risk of sinking a merchantman while we're having our fun."
"With this tow, then, it will be three o'clock before we get out where we really ought to be, sir."
"That will give us at least two hours of good daylight," nodded Mr. Danvers. "Of course you know this coast well enough to pick your way back after dark?"
"I'd run the craft five times the distance, under water, and hit the harbor without thought of an accident," spoke young Benson, seriously, and with no thought of boasting.
"Jove, my young friend, if you can do a thing like that, you're a genius at the work," muttered Danvers, after a swift, side glance at Skipper Jack.
"I've done as much before," laughed Jack. "Either of my friends could do it, for that matter."
"Then you're veritable young kings of the deep!" declared Lieutenant Danvers, heartily.
"Oh, we're not wonders," smiled Jack, goodhumoredly; then added, more seriously, "If we really do anything worth while, my friends and I, we're to be regarded simply as the products of constant practice."
"You're modest enough about it," agreed Danvers.
Presently, the naval officer himself took a hand at managing the submarine. Jack, knowing that the boat was in fine professional hands, slipped unconcernedly below, to chat with Hal Hastings, who sat doggedly by his engines.
"What's the matter? What makes you look so solemn, old fellow?" asked the young submarine skipper, when he caught sight of his chum's solemn face.
"Oh, you'd laugh, if I told you," smiled Hal.
"Seeing omens of ill again!" persisted young Benson.
"I suppose," sighed Hal, "well, I have a sort of premonition."
"Pre--premo--" stuttered Captain Jack, holding comically to the port side of his jaw. "Oh, pshaw! Call it a plain United States 'hunch.' What's the tip the spooks are giving anyway, Hal?"
Hastings smiled again, though he went on:
"Oh, it's just a queer sort of notion I have that something is going to happen to us this afternoon."
"Right-o," drawled Jack. "You don't have to shove off from that, Hal. Something is going to happen to us. This afternoon we're going to have the first drill in the actual firing of submarine torpedoes."
"Oh, I know that," Hastings admitted, quickly. "But what I see ahead, or feel as though I see, is some kind of disaster. Now, you'll think I'm a sailor-croaker, won't you, Jack?"
"Disaster?" repeated Jack, slowly. "Well, to be sure, we've the outfit on board for a disaster, if we wanted one. Two real torpedoes that hold, between them, four hundred pounds of gun-cotton--or danger-calico, as Williamson would call it. But cheer up, old fellow. There's no danger, after all. Williamson and his pipe are on the other boat."
"Oh, of course nothing is really going to happen,"