The Submarine Boys and the Middies | Page 2

the Pollard Submarine boat.
"No, sir," Captain Jack replied.
"We have thought," resumed Mr. Farnum, quietly, after blowing out a
ring of smoke, "of calling the third boat, now building, the 'Benson.'"
"The--the--what, sir?" stammered Jack, flushing and rising.
"Now, don't get excited, lad," laughed the shipbuilder.
"But--but--naming a boat for the United States Navy after me, sir--"
Captain Jack's face flushed crimson.
"Of course, if you object--" smiled Mr. Farnum, then paused.
"Object? You know I don't, sir. But I am afraid the idea 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