The Submarine Boys and the Middies | Page 2

is going to my head," laughed Jack, his face still flushed. "The very idea of there being in the United States Navy a fine and capable craft named after me--"
"Oh, if the Navy folks object," laughed Farnum, "then they'll change the name quickly enough. You understand, lad, the names we give to our boats last only until the craft are sold. The Navy people can change those names if they please."
"It will be a handsome compliment to me, Mr. Farnum. More handsome than deserved, I fear."
"Deserved, well enough," retorted the shipbuilder. "Dave Pollard and I are well enough satisfied that, if it hadn't been for you youngsters, and the superb way in which you handled our first boat, Dave and I would still be sitting on the anxious bench in the ante-rooms of the Navy Department at Washington."
"Well, I don't deserve to have a boat named after me any more than Hal does, or Eph Somers."
"Give us time, won't you, Captain?" pleaded Jacob Farnum, his face straight, but his eyes laughing. "We expect to build at least five boats. If we didn't, this yard never would have been fitted for the present work, and you three boys, who've done so handsomely by us, wouldn't each own, as you now do, ten shares of stock in this company. Never fear; there'll be a 'Hastings' and a 'Somers' added to our fleet one of these days--even though some of our boats have to be sold to foreign governments."
"If a boat named the 'Hastings' were sold to some foreign government," laughed Jack Benson, "Hal, here, wouldn't say much about it. But call a boat named the 'Somers,' after Eph, and then sell it, say, to the Germans or the Japanese, and all of Eph's American gorge would come to the surface. I'll wager he'd scheme to sink any submarine torpedo boat, named after him, that was sold to go under a foreign flag."
"I hope we'll never have to sell any of our boats to foreign governments," replied Jacob Farnum, earnestly. "And we won't either, if the United States Government will give us half a show."
"That's just the trouble," grumbled Hal Hastings, breaking into the talk, at last. "Confound it, why don't the people of this country run their government more than they do? Four-fifths of the inventors who get up great things that would put the United States on top, and keep us there, have to go abroad to find a market for their inventions! If I could invent a cannon to-day that would give all the power on earth to the nation owning it, would the American Government buy it from me? No, sir! I'd have to sell the cannon to England, Germany or Japan--or else starve while Congress was talking of doing something about it in the next session. Mr. Farnum, you have the finest, and the only real submarine torpedo boat. Yet, if you want to go on building and selling these craft, you'll have to dispose of most of them abroad."
"I hope not," responded the shipbuilder, solemnly.
Having said his say, Hal subsided. He was likely not to speak again for an hour. As a class, engineers, having to listen much to noisy machinery, are themselves silent.
It was well along in the afternoon, a little past the middle of October. For our three young friends, Jack, Hal and Eph, things were dull just at the present moment. They were drawing their salaries from the Pollard company, yet of late there had been little for them to do.
Yet the three submarine boys knew that big things were in the air. David Pollard was away, presumably on important business. Jacob Farnum was not much given to speaking of plans until he had put them through to the finish. Some big deal was at present "on" with the Government. That much the submarine boys knew by intuition. They felt, therefore, that, at any moment, they were likely to be called into action--to be called upon for big things.
As Jack and Hal sat in the office, silent, while Jacob Farnum turned to his desk to scan one of the papers lying there, the door opened. A boy burst in, waving a yellow envelope.
"Operator said to hustle this wire to you," shouted the boy, panting a bit. "Said it might be big news for Farnum. So I ran all the way."
Jacob Farnum took the yellow envelope, opening it and glancing hastily through the contents.
"It is pretty good news," assented the shipbuilder, a smile wreathing his face. "This is for you, messenger."
"This" proved to be a folded dollar bill. The messenger took the money eagerly, then demanded, more respectfully:
"Any answer, sir?"
"Not at this moment, thank you," replied Mr. Farnum. "That is all; you may go, boy."
Plainly the boy who had brought the telegram was disappointed over