Chapter 2 TROUBLE IN THE MAKING STAGE

On the hurricane deck of the "Waverly" stood one man, mouth wide open and eyes a-stare, who couldn't seem to get the meaning of it all. That man was the leader of the combined band from the winter hotels.

Turning, glancing upward, the lieutenant looked at the leader with a glance of cool wonder.

"Play, man! Why don't you play? What are you there for?"

Then, all of a sudden, reddening, the band leader rapped his music stand with his baton, next gave the signal, and the band crashed forth into the exultant strains of:

"See! The Conquering Hero comes!"

At the third measure the band was all but drowned out by renewed cheering, that came more uproariously than ever.

Captain Jack Benson had surely chosen a dramatic manner of making his appearance at Spruce Beach. Ten thousand tongues were set wagging all at once. When there came a lull, a man's voice on a tug not far from the gunboat could be heard, asserting loudly:

"Well, that's what submarines are for-to sneak in while you're wiping a speck of dust from your eye!"

That remark, coming just as the band ceased its strains, was plainly audible, and brought a laugh from everyone aboard the submarine, including Eph, who was just climbing, in his bathing suit, up to the platform deck.

Lieutenant Commander Kimball, hurrying from his cabin, had joined Lieutenant Featherstone at the rail, the pretty girl slipping away to join a group of civilians.

"What do you think of us?" called Jacob Farnum, a broad grin of delight on his face.

"You'll do," admitted Kimball.

"Do you consider yourself sunk?" demanded David Pollard, laughingly.

"Theoretically, yes," assented Lieutenant Commander Kimball. "I wonder if you could do it as well in war time?"

"Couldn't possibly do anything like it in war time," called back Captain

Jack Benson. "For, sir, you fly the Stars and, Stripes!"

That was a happy speech, delivered at just the right second. It set all within hearing to cheering again. And then the thousands beyond caught it up.

"I'll say this much," shouted back Lieutenant Commander Kimball, as soon as he could make himself heard: "We'd rather have you with us, Mr. Benson, than against us."

"You'll have your wish, sir, as long as I'm alive," Jack answered, turning and lifting his hat in simple yet eloquent salute to the Flag waving at the gunboat's stern.

All this time Hal Hastings stood by the deck wheel, one hand occasionally straying to the engine room signal buttons, as he kept the "Benson" just about a hundred feet from the gunboat and nearly abeam.

"Where shall I anchor, sir?" called Captain Jack, presently.

"Better take it about four points off our port bow and at least four hundred feet away, Mr. Benson," called back the lieutenant commander.

"Four points off port and four hundred feet it is, sir," answered the young submarine skipper, saluting. Then he gave the order to Hal.

"As soon as you're anchored, I'll send you over a boat to be at your disposal this afternoon," called Lieutenant Commander Kimball.

"We'll use the boat, sir, to pay you a visit, if you permit," Jack shouted back.

"By all means come aboard. Then we'll visit you. We're anxious to see the works of such a wonderful little craft."

Within ten minutes a man-o-war's cutter was alongside, rowed by six alert-looking young sailors, while a coxswain held the tiller ropes.

Messrs. Farnum and Pollard, Jack and Hal made up the visiting party, leaving Eph Somers aboard the submarine, with Williamson to help him at need.

Cordial, indeed, was the reception of the submarine folks aboard the gunboat. There was a great amount of handshaking to be done.

In the meantime, Eph Somers was having something in the way of trouble back on the platform deck of the "Benson."

Two small boats, manned by harbor boatmen, and each carrying a few passengers, had put off from shore, and now ranged alongside.

"How do you do, Captain?" shouted a young man at the bow of one of the boats.

"Louder!" begged Eph.

"How do you do, Captain?"

"Louder. I'm afraid the captain can't hear you yet," grinned the carroty-topped submarine boy. "He's over on the gunboat."

"Then who are you?"

"Who? Me?" demanded Eph, innocently. "Oh, I'm only the Secretary of the Navy."

"All right, Mr. Secretary," laughed the same young man. "We are coming aboard."

"Aboard of what?" inquired Eph.

"Why, you're submarine boat, of course," came the answer.

"Guess not!" responded Eph, briskly.

"Why, yes; we're newspaper men, and it's business, not fun with us."

The boat containing the speaker lay lightly alongside at this moment. In another moment the young man in the bow would have clambered up on deck, but Eph called down to him:

"Hold on! Stay where you are. My orders are to hit any fellow with a boathook who tries to come up here in the captain's absence."

"But we've got to have a look at your boat, don't you see?" insisted the newspaper man, though, as Eph carelessly picked up a boathook, the would-be caller waited prudently in the bow of his boat.

Young Somers was surely in a state of uncertainty. He had strict orders to allow no one aboard unless he knew them to be United States naval officers. On the other hand, the auburn-haired boy knew how necessary it was for the submarine folks to keep on good terms with newspaper writers if the American people were to be favorably impressed with the claims of the Pollard boat.

"Now, see here," said Eph, balancing the boathook, "I'm sorry to stand here making a noise like a crank, but have you any idea at all what orders mean on shipboard? And I'm under the strictest orders not to let anyone aboard."

"Get your orders changed, then," proposed another newspaper man, cheerfully.

"If you'll wait, I'll see if I can," muttered Eph, hopefully.

"Oh, we'll wait."

Williamson's head had appeared in the manhole way.

"Come out on deck, and don't let anyone on board unless we get orders to that effect," murmured Somers, passing the conning tower. Then, through a megaphone, the submarine boy hailed the gunboat, asking if it would be possible for him to talk with Jack Benson. Benson soon afterward came forward on the "Waverly." Eph explained the situation. Jack shouted back to allow the visitors on the platform deck, but not to let any of them into the conning tower, or below.

So Eph turned to the two boatloads of visitors, explaining:

"Perhaps you men can get that all changed if you come out to-morrow, when the captain is here. But the best I can do to-day is to let you up here on the platform deck."

"Oh, well," returned the first newspaper man to get up there beside the boy, "you can tell us, as well as anyone, about your trip down the coast and the way you slipped in here."

"And also," chimed in another, "you're the young man who came straight up through the water when she was beneath the surface?"

Eph admitted that he was.

"That's the thing I want to know about," continued the second newspaper man. "I've heard before about that wonderful trick of leaving a submerged submarine, and coming to the surface. How is the thing done?"

Eph regarded this questioner with wondering patience, before he replied:

"You want to know so little that I'm sorry I'm deaf in my front teeth and dumb in my right ear."

"That's on you, Paisley!" chuckled one of the newspaper men.

Then three or four began to ask questions at the same time, which caused young Somers to wait, then remarked blandly:

"Now, if you'll all kindly talk at once, I'll give you, in a few words, a straight account of the plain features of our trip down here, including our run under water. But, if there's any question I don't answer for you, you'll understand, I hope, that it's because I know it would be bad manners for me to tell you anything that only officers of the Navy have a right to know."

"All right, Commodore," nodded one of the newspaper men, good-humoredly.

"You're all right. Go ahead and spin your yarn in your own way."

Thereupon, without telling anything that he had no right to tell, Eph managed none the less to give his hearers an entertaining account of the "Benson's" long trip down the coast without stop or help.

"And, unless I'm in a big error, gentlemen, ours is the longest trip that a submarine boat ever took by itself."

"You're right there, too," nodded one of the newspaper men, who made a study of naval affairs and records. "And the way this craft came in this afternoon beat anything, so far as I'm aware, that was ever done with a submarine."

"That's Captain Jack Benson's specialty," replied Eph Somers, his eyes twinkling.

"What's his specialty!"

"Doing things with a submarine boat that have never been done before.

Captain Benson is the latest wonder in the submarine line."

"He has a very steady admirer in you, hasn't he?" inquired one of the newspaper men, laughingly..

"Yes; and the same is true of anyone else who knows him well," declared Eph, warmly. "Jack Benson is about the best fellow on earth-and one of the smartest, too, his comrades think."

Thereupon one of the newspaper correspondents began tactfully to draw out young Somers about the history and past performances of the young submarine captain. On this subject Somers talked as freely as they could want.

"It was Benson, too, who discovered the trick of leaving a submarine boat on the bottom, and coming to the top by himself, wasn't it?" slyly asked one of the visitors.

"That was his discovery," nodded Eph, promptly.

"What's the principle of the trick?"

Eph's jaws snapped with a slight noise. He remained silent, for a few moments, before he replied:

"So far, that trick is known only to the Pollard people and a few officers of the Navy. The fewer that know, the better the chance of keeping it a secret. Don't you believe me?"

"That's one way of looking at it, perhaps," nodded a reporter. "But there's another side to that, too, Somers. The United States now own some of your boats, and the money of the people paid for those boats. Now, don't you think the people of this country have a right to know some of the secrets for which they pay good money, and a lot of it?"

On hearing the question put that way Eph looked tremendously thoughtful for a few seconds.

"Why, yes, undoubtedly," admitted the carroty-topped submarine boy.

"I never thought of it that way before."

"Then-"

"See here," interrupted Eph, "it was the Secretary of the Navy, who on behalf of the people, bought our boats."

"Yes-"

"He acted as the agent of the people," Eph continued.

"Well-"

"Therefore," asserted Eph Somers, with a roguish twinkle in his eyes, "the Secretary of the Navy is the proper official for you to go to in search of that information. And you may tell the Secretary-"

"Stop making fun of us," interposed a newspaper man.

"You may tell the Secretary," finished Eph, "that I said I had no objection to his giving you the information you want."

The newspaper men after gazing briefly at the innocent-looking face of the carroty-topped one, began to grin.

"Young Somers is all right," declared one of the visitors. "He knows when to talk, and also when to hold his tongue."

"I never was sized up so straight before," grinned Eph, "since I was caught stealing grapes behind the Methodist church."

Before the newspaper men departed in their boats they had obtained some amusing and interesting points for a news "story." Yet not one of them had gained any inside information as to the closely guarded secrets of the submarine. Eph, from his very disposition and temperament, made undoubtedly the best press agent the Pollard Company could have had. Hal Hastings, while wishing to be obliging, probably would have said his whole "say" in twenty or thirty words. Jack Benson would have sung the praises of the Pollard boats readily enough. But it was Eph, alone of the three, who could give to such an interview the humor and wit that American newspaper readers enjoy.

One "reporter" in the party that was rowed back to the beach was not known to his associates. Wherever several newspaper men are gathered at a point on business it is generally easy for a stranger, not connected with the press, to push himself into the group. The stranger, in this instance, had given the name of Norton, claiming to be from an Omaha paper.

Arrived at the beach, however, "Norton" did not hasten to the telegraph office. Instead, he hurried to the Hotel Clayton, the largest and most expensive of the hotels at Spruce Beach.

Entering one of the elevators, Norton stepped off at the third floor. He stepped briskly down a corridor, stopping before a door and giving an unusual style of knock.

"Come-in," sounded a drawling voice, and Norton entered.

From a seat by a table, in the center of the large room, rose a man somewhat past middle age This man was tall, not very stout, with a sallow face adorned by a mustache and goatee. The man's eyes were piercing and black. His hair was also black, save where a slight gray was visible at the temples.

As Norton entered, the man, who rose, threw a cigarette into the fire place, then reached over, selected another cigarette and lighted it. The room was thick with the odor of some foreign tobacco.

"Well, Norton?" challenged this stranger, in a low voice.

"I've been aboard the new submarine, Monsieur Lemaire," replied the young man. "I went with a party of newspaper writers, pretending to be one of their calling."

"An excellent idea, Norton. And you saw the very boyish officers of the boat?"

"Only one of them. The other two were paying a call on board the gunboat. I saw Somers."

"You gathered some idea of how to pump him for the information wanted, of course?"

"No; I didn't," retorted Norton, scowling. "I learned, very soon, that Somers is one whom we want to leave out of our count in getting information?"

"Why so?"

"Well, M. Lemaire, if you meet that young fellow, and try to draw him out, you'll understand. He can talk longer, and tell less, than any young fellow I've met. He seems to guess just what you want to know, and then he carefully tells you something else."

"Ah, well, out of three young men, we shall find one who will tell us all we need to know," laughed M. Lemaire, gayly. "So it is only a question of learning which of the three to make the first attempt upon."

"If you want a suggestion-" began Norton.

"By all means, my dear fellow."

"Then turn your batteries of inquisitiveness loose upon Jack Benson, first of all. He may be easy game. As for the third, Hal Hastings, I hear that he is a silent fellow, who says little, and generally waits five minutes, to think his answer over, before he gives it."

"Benson it shall be, then," nodded M. Lemaire. "I shall find it easy to meet him. And now, good-bye, Norton, until this evening. You will know what to do then."

After Norton had gone out, closing the door behind him, M. Lemaire carefully flecked the ash from his cigarette as he murmured to himself:

"Then it shall be Captain Benson whom we first attack! Nor do I believe I can do better than to enlist the services of Mademoiselle Sara. Ah, yes! Her eyes are fine-perfect. One looks into her eyes, and trusts her. Captain Jack Benson, you shall have the pleasure of meeting a most charming creature!"