The Submarine Boys and the Middies | Page 5

was not a sign of her. At least, she had not sunk at her moorings,
for the buoys floated in their respective places, with no manner of
tackle attached to them.
"A submarine boat can't slip its own cables and vanish without human
hands!" gasped the staggered Jack Benson.
"There's something uncanny about this," muttered Hal Hastings.
Jacob Farnum stood rooted to the spot, opening and closing his hands
in a way that testified plainly to the extent of his bewilderment.
CHAPTER II
: HOW EPH FLIRTED WITH SCIENCE
Jack Benson was the first of the trio to move.
Without a word he broke into a run, heading for the narrow little
shingle of beach.
"Got an idea, Captain?" shouted Jacob Farnum, darting after his young
submarine skipper.
"Yes, sir!" floated back over Jack's shoulder.
"Then what's at the bottom--"

"Eph and the boat, both together, or I miss my guess," Captain Jack
shouted back as he halted at the water's edge, where a rowboat lay
hauled up on the shore.
Jacob Farnum's face showed suddenly pallid as he, also, reached the
beach. Hal, who was in the rear, did not seem so much startled.
"Do you think Eph has gone off on a cruise all alone?--that he has come
to any harm?" gasped the shipbuilder.
"I don't know, but I'm not going to worry a mite about Eph Somers
until I have to," retorted Jack Benson, easily.
"Eph can generally take care of himself," added Hal Hastings. "He
rarely falls into any kind of scrape that he can't climb out of."
"But this is a bad time for him to take the 'Farnum' and cruise away,"
objected the owner of the yard. "The 'Hudson' may be here at any hour,
you know, and we ought to be ready for orders."
As he spoke, Mr. Farnum scanned the horizon away to the south, out
over the sea.
"There's a line of smoke, now, and not many miles away," he
announced. "It may, as likely as not, be smoke from the 'Hudson's'
pipe."
"Going out with us, sir?" inquired Captain Jack Benson, as Hal took his
place at a pair of oars.
"Yes," nodded the owner of the yard, dropping into a seat at the stern of
the boat, after which Benson pushed off at the bow.
Down on the seashore, on this day just past the middle of October, the
air was keen and brisk. There had been frost for several nights past.
Sleighing might be looked for in another month.
"Cable's gone from this buoy," declared Captain Jack, as Hal rowed
close. "Over to the other one, old fellow."

Here, too, the cable was missing. Evidently the "Farnum" had made a
clean get-away. If there had been any accident, it must have taken place
after the new submarine boat had slipped away from her moorings.
"Humph!" grunted Jack, scanning the sea. "No sign of the boat
anywhere. Eph may be anywhere within twenty miles of here."
"Or within twenty feet, either," grinned Hal, looking down into the
waters that were lead-colored under the dull autumn sky.
"What are we going to do, Captain?" inquired Jacob Farnum. "There
are Grant Andrews and three of his machinists coming down to the
water."
"I reckon, sir, we'd better put them aboard the 'Pollard' first, sir,"
Benson suggested.
Mr. Farnum nodding, the boat was rowed in to the shore and Andrews
and his men were put aboard the "Pollard" at the platform deck.
Captain Jack Benson unlocking the door to the conning tower, was
himself the first to disappear down below. When he came back he
carried a line to which was attached a heavy sounding-lead.
"It won't take us long to sound the deep spots in this little harbor," said
the young skipper, as he dropped down once more into the bow of the
shore boat. "Row about, Hal, over the places where the submarine
could go below out of sight."
As Hal rowed, Skipper Jack industriously used the sounding-lead.
For twenty minutes nothing resulted from this exploration. Then, all of
a sudden, Benson shouted:
"Back water, Hal! Easy; rest on your oars. Steady!"
Jack Benson raised the lead two or three feet, then let it down again,
playing it up and down very much as a cod fisherman uses his line and
hook.

"I'm hitting something, and it is hardly a rock, either," declared young
Benson. "Pull around about three points to starboard, Hal, then steal
barely forward."
Again Benson played see-saw with his sounding-line over the boat's
gunwale.
"If my lead isn't hitting the 'Farnum,'" declared the young skipper,
positively, "then it's the 'Farnum's' ghost. Hold steady, now, Hal."
Immediately afterward, Benson caused the lead fairly to dance a jig on
whatever it touched at bottom.
"What's the good of that, anyway?" demanded