The Submarine Boys and the Spies Dodging the Sharks of the Deep

"Has anyone sighted them yet?"

"No."

"What can be the matter?"

"You know, their specialty is going to the bottom. Possibly they've gone there once too often."

"Don't!" shuddered a young woman. "Try not to be gruesome always,

George."

The young man laughed as he turned aside.

Everyone and his friend at Spruce Beach was asking similar questions. None of the answers were satisfactory, because nobody knew just what reply to make.

Everyone in the North who has the money and leisure to get away from home during a portion of the winter knows Spruce Beach. It is one of nature's most beautiful spots on the eastern coast of Florida, and man has made it one of the most expensive places in the world.

In other words, Spruce Beach is a paradise to look at. The climate, in the winter months, is mild and balmy. Health grows rapidly at this favored spot, and so fashion has seized upon it as her own. True, there are yet a few cottages and boarding houses left where travelers of moderate means may find board.

The whole air of Spruce Beach is one of holiday expectancy. The winter visitors go there to enjoy themselves; they expect it and demand it. They are gratified. From the first of December to the middle of March, life at Spruce Beach makes you think of a great, jolly, unending picnic. The greatest cause for regret is that more people of ordinary means cannot go there and reap some of the plentiful harvest of fun and frolic.

The thousands of tourists, hotel guests and cottagers at Spruce Beach had been promised that by the middle of December they would have a treat the like of which few of them had ever enjoyed before. The Pollard Submarine Boat Company, so named after David Pollard the inventor-the company of which Jacob Farnum, the shipbuilder, was president-had promised that by that date their newest, fastest and most formidable submarine torpedo boat, the "Benson," should arrive at Spruce Beach, there to begin a series of demonstrations and trials.

Still more extraordinary, the captain of this marvelous new submarine craft of war was known to be a boy of sixteen-Jack Benson, after whom the new navy-destroyer had been named.

Newspaper readers were beginning to be familiar with the name of Captain Jack Benson. Though so young he had, after a stern apprenticeship, actually succeeded in making himself a world-known expert in the handling of submarine torpedo boats.

Those lighter readers of newspapers, who scoffed at the very idea of a sixteen-year-old boy handling a costly submarine boat, were sometimes reminded that the same thing happens at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, where the young midshipmen are given instruction and often are qualified as young experts along similar lines.

More remarkable still, as faithful readers of newspapers knew, Captain Jack Benson had associated with him, on the new torpedo boat, two other sixteen-year-old boys, by name Hal Hastings and Eph Somers. It was also rumored, and nearly as often believed, that these three sea-bred young Americans knew as much as anyone in the United States on the special subject of submarine boat handling.

Be that all as it might, it was known to every man, woman and child at Spruce Beach that the "Benson" was due to arrive on this December day and the whole picnicking population was out to watch the incoming from the sea of the strange craft.

More than that, the United States gunboat, "Waverly," had been for two days at anchor in the little, somewhat rockbound harbor just north of the beach. It was to be the pleasant duty of the naval officer commanding the "Waverly" to extend official welcome to the "Benson" as soon as that craft pointed its cigar-shaped nose into the harbor.

The first boat built by the submarine company had been named, after the inventor, the "Pollard." The second had been named the "Farnum," in honor of the enterprising young shipbuilder who had financed this big undertaking. And now Spruce Beach was awaiting the arrival of the company's third boat, the "Benson," so-called in recognition of the hard and brilliant work done by the young skipper himself.

That this was to be something of a social and gala occasion, even on board the gunboat, was evident from the fact that on the naval vessel's decks there now promenaded some two score of ladies and their escorts from shore, and on the hurricane deck lounged musicians from hotel orchestras on shore, these men of music having been combined to form a band, in order to make the occasion more joyous.

"Look at that shore, black with people!" cried a woman to one of the naval officers on the deck of the "Waverly."

"There must be at least ten thousand people in that crowd," laughed Lieutenant Featherstone. "I wonder whether they're more interested in the boat, or its boy officers?"

"Are Captain Benson and his comrades really as clever as some of the newspapers have made them out to be?" asked the woman doubtfully.

"Judging by letters I've had from friends who are officers at the Naval Academy," replied Lieutenant Featherstone, "the young men must be very well versed, indeed, in all the arts of their peculiar profession."

A cheer went up from the principal throng over at the beach. Smoke had been sighted off on the eastern horizon, and this must come from the long expected craft.

From boat to boat the news passed, and so it traveled to the deck of the "Waverly," where the sailors received it with broad smiles. The leader of the impromptu band raised his baton, rapping for attention. But Lieutenant Featherstone, below, caught the leader's eye in time and held up his hand for a pause.

"If you play, leader," called the officer, in a low voice that carried, nevertheless, "don't imagine that your music is to welcome the 'Benson.' Submarine boats don't travel under steam power. They can't."

So, too, on shore, the understanding was quickly reached that the smoke did not indicate the whereabouts of the expected submarine. Half and hour later it was found that the smoke came from the tug of a fruit transporting company.

Where, then, was the "Benson?"

It was not in the least like young Captain Jack Benson to be behind time when he had an appointment to get anywhere. Nor did that very youthful companion expect to arrive late on this day of days.

Some miles away from Spruce Beach the submarine boat, as shown by her submersion gauge, was running along at six miles an hour some fifty-two feet under the surface of the ocean.

Young Eph Somers, auburn-haired and ofttimes impulsive, now looked as sober as a judge as he sat perched up in the conning tower, beyond which, at that depth, he could not see a thing. However, a shaded incandescent light dropped its rays over the surface of the compass by the aid of which Eph was steering with mathematical exactness.

Out in the engine room stood Hal Hastings, closely watching every movement of even as trusted and capable a man as Williamson, one of the machinists from the Farnum shipyards.

At the cabin table sat Captain Jack Benson himself, his head bent low as he scanned a chart. His right hand held a pair of nickeled dividers. Near his left lay a scale rule. A paper pad, half covered with figures, also lay within reach.

On the opposite side of the table sat Jacob Farnum, owner of the Farnum shipyard and president of the Pollard Submarine Boat Company. Beside Mr. Farnum sat David Pollard, the inventor.

Readers of the preceding volumes in this series are familiar with all these people, now decidedly famous in the submarine boat world. In the first volume, "The Submarine Boys on Duty," was related how all these people came together; how the boys, by sheer force of character "broke into" the submarine boating world. In that volume the building of the first of the company's boats, the "Pollard" was described, and all the exciting adventures that were connected with the event were fully narrated.

Our former readers will also remember all the wonderful adventures and the rollicking fun set forth in the second volume, under the title of "The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip." In this book, bristling with adventures, and made lighter, in spots, by accounts of humorous doings, was told how the boys gained fame as submarine experts. It was their fine, loyal work that interested the United States government in buying that first boat, the "Pollard."

The third volume in the series, entitled "The Submarine Boys and the Middies" told how our young friends secured the prize detail at Annapolis; where, for a brief time, the three submarine boys served as instructors in submarine work to the young midshipmen at the Naval Academy. Nor was this accomplished without serious, and even sensational, opposition from the representative of a rival submarine company. Hence the boys went through some rousing adventures. Incidentally, they fell against practical instruction in hazing at the Naval Academy.

Adventures enough had befallen the submarine boys to last any man for a lifetime. Yet, as fate decreed it, Captain Jack Benson and his staunch young comrades were now destined to adventures greater and further reaching than any of which they could have dreamed. In advance, this winter trip to Spruce Beach promised to be little more than a pleasant relaxation for the youngsters. What it really turned out to be will soon be made clear in the pages of this volume.

"It seems a very risky plan that you're trying, Jack," remarked Jacob

Farnum, at last.

"Don't you want me to do it, sir?" asked the young skipper, looking up instantly from his chart.

"Why, er-"

But here David Pollard, the inventor of these boats broke in, eagerly:

"Of course we ought to do it, Farnum. Jack is wholly right. If we enter the harbor at Spruce Beach in this fashion, and carry through our entire plan successfully, what on earth can there be left for opponents of our class of boats to say?"

"Not if we succeed, of course," smiled Farnum. "It's only the pesky little 'if' that's bothering me at all. I don't want any of you to think me a coward-"

"We know, very well, you're not, sir," Captain Jack interposed, very quietly.

"But if we make any slip in our calculations," continued Jacob Farnum, "the first bad thing about it is that we'll smash a fine boat which, otherwise, the United States Government is likely to want at a price around two hundred thousand dollars. That, however, is not the greatest risk that I have in mind. On board this craft are five people without whom it would be rather hopeless for anyone to go on building the Pollard type of boat. Therefore, besides risking a valuable craft and our own rather inconsequential lives, we go further and put the United States Navy in danger of having only a couple of our boats. Now, the fact is, we want the Navy to have three or four dozen of our submarine craft, for we ourselves believe implicitly in the great worth of the Pollard boats."

"That's just the point, sir," cried Captain Jack Benson.

"Eh? What is?" inquired Mr. Farnum, looking at his young skipper in some bewilderment.

"Why, sir," laughed Jack, "the point is that we believe our boats to be infinitely ahead of anything owned in any other navy on earth. We believe it possible to do things, with boats like this one, that can be accomplished with no other submarine craft in the world. Now, it's a fact that, in all the navies, lest an accident happen to a submarine, that craft is obliged to travel about, always, in the company of a steam craft of war, which is known as the parent ship. Yet we've come, straight from the shipyard at Dunhaven, many hundreds of miles, without any such escort. We've been running along under our own power, night and day, without accident, stop or bother. Thus we've shown that the Pollard boat can do things that no other submarine craft are ever trusted to try alone. And now, all that remains to show is that, at the end of a long voyage, we can approach a coast, unseen, even though thousands of people are probably looking for us, and that we can get into a harbor without being detected; that, in fact, we could do anything we might have a mind to do to an enemy's ships that might be in that harbor. But now, sir, you propose that, lest we have accidents, it will be best to rise to the surface and enter the harbor at Spruce Beach as plainly and stupidly as though the 'Benson' were some mere lumber schooner."

"I see the thing just the way Jack Benson does," murmured David Pollard, thrusting his hands down deep in his trousers pockets.

"Oh, well, if I'm voted down, I'll give in," laughed Jacob Farnum. "I wonder, though, how Hal and Eph feel about this?"

"I don't have to ask them," nodded Captain Jack, confidently.

"Why not?"

"We settled it all, days ago, sir."

"And they both agreed with you?"

"Down to the last jot, Mr. Farnum. They saw the beauty and the boldness of the plan."

Oh, well, go ahead, then, responded Mr. Farnum, rising and standing by the cabin table. "Of course, the picturesque and romantic possibilities of the scheme are plain enough to me. We'll have the people at Spruce Beach agape with curiosity, then wild with enthusiasm. And, really, to be sure, we have to arouse the enthusiasm of the American people over this whole game. That's the surest way of forcing Congress to spend more money on our boats."

"Where are you going, Jake?" called the inventor, as his partner started aft.

"To the stateroom, to get a little nap," replied the shipbuilder. "We're not by any means due at Spruce Beach yet."

"Jake Farnum is surely not a coward," chuckled Mr. Pollard, as the stateroom door closed. "Nor is he over anxious about any detail in our little game, or he couldn't go to sleep at this important time. I know I couldn't get a wink of sleep if I turned in now. I've simply got to sit up, wide awake, until I see the finish of your bold stroke, Jack Benson."

Captain Jack laughed easily, then glanced at his watch to note the lapse of time since he had made his last calculation of their whereabouts. It is one thing to be in the open air, navigating a vessel, but it is quite another affair to be fifty-odd feet below the surface, calculating all by the distance covered and the course steered.

"Any deviation in the course, Eph?" Captain Jack called up into the conning tower.

"Not by as much as a hair's breadth," retorted young Somers, almost gruffly, for with him, to depart from a given course, was well nigh equal to a capital crime.

Jack touched a button in the side of the table. Obeying the summons, quiet Hal Hastings thrust his head out into the cabin.

"Just the same speed, Hal?" the young captain asked.

"Hasn't changed a single revolution per minute," Hastings answered, briefly.

With his watch on the table before him, and employing the scale rule and dividers, the young submarine skipper placed a new dot on the chart.

"Something ought to be happening in three quarters of an hour," Benson remarked, with a chuckle, to Mr. Pollard.

Less than half an hour later the young submarine skipper climbed up into the conning tower beside Eph.

"Same old straight course, eh, lad?" asked Jack quietly.

"You know it," retorted Eph.

"Then we're where we ought to be," responded Jack Benson, bending forward. With his right hand on the speed control he shut off speed.

"Now, just sit where you are, Eph, until I come up again," advised the young commander.

"Going to the surface?" demanded Somers, with interest.

"Pretty close," nodded Benson.

Calling Mr. Pollard to his aid, Jack began to operate the machinery that admitted compressed air to the water tanks, expelling the water gradually from those same tanks. This was the means by which the submarine boat rose to the surface. All the time that he was doing this, Jack Benson kept his keen glance on the submersion gauge. At last he stopped.

"How is it up there, Eph?" he called, pleasantly.

"Why, of course there's a lot of good daylight filtering down through the water now," Somers admitted.

Captain Jack went nimbly up the spiral stairway. Now, he had still another piece of apparatus to call into play. This affair is known to naval men as the periscope.

In effect, the periscope is a device which in the main is like a pipe; it can be pushed up through the top of the conning tower, through a special, water-proof cylinder, until the top of the periscope is a foot, or less, above the surface of the water.

The top of this instrument is fitted with lenses and mirrors. Down through the shaft of the periscope are other mirrors, which pass along any image reflected on the uppermost mirror of all. At the bottom of the periscope is the last mirror of the series, and, opening in upon this, there is an eyepiece fitted with a lens.

As Captain Jack Benson applied his right eye to the eyepiece he was able to see anything above the surface of the water that lay in any direction that the periscope was pointing.

"Right opposite Spruce Beach, as the chart showed!" chuckled the young commander. Under the magnifying effect of the eyepiece lens Benson could see the beach, the flag-bedecked hotels, and the moving masses of people on the shore. Yet, all this time, he was out at sea, more than a mile from the beach. The periscope itself, if seen from a boat an eighth of a mile away, would undoubtedly have been taken for a floating bottle.

"Let me have a peep," demanded Somers.

Eph looked briefly, then chuckled:

"Must be thousands of people over yonder, wondering what on earth has happened to us!"

"Do you make out the gunboat, at anchor to the north of the hotel section?" inquired Captain Jack.

"Oh, yes. Say, they'll have an awakening on that gray craft, won't they?"

"If we don't make any slip in our calculations," answered Benson, gravely.

"Well, we're not going to make any slip," asserted Eph Somers, stoutly.

"Now, keep quiet, please, old fellow. I want to do a little calculating before we take the last, desperate step."

All this time the conning tower of the submarine was just a bit below the surface. Nothing but the slender shaft and the small head of the periscope was above the wash of the lazy waves.

Captain Jack soon had his calculation made. Then, with a quiet smile, he remarked:

"I guess you'd better get below, Eph, for your part. I'll take the wheel, now, and Mr. Pollard will attend to the submerging mechanisms."

Eph laughed joyously as he darted below. He had a part assigned to him that was bound to be enjoyable.

"Mr. Pollard!" called down the young skipper, a few moments later.

"Aye, Captain Jack!"

"Let her down slowly, please, until the gauge shows just fourteen feet. That's the greatest depth I dare try for the course we're going to follow."

"Aye, Captain Jack. Fourteen feet it shall be."

For the benefit of some readers who may not understand, it is to be stated that the charts of harbors bear markings that show the exact depth of water at every point in the harbor at low tide. Thus, the chart of the harbor just north of Spruce Beach had already told the young submarine skipper just how far below the surface he could travel with safety to his craft.

Further, he knew the draft of the "Waverly" to be eleven feet. So the youthful commander could feel quite certain that he would be in no danger of colliding, below the water-line, with Uncle Sam's gunboat.

On the deck of the "Waverly" itself there was the same spirit of expectancy that there had been an hour earlier in the afternoon.

Lieutenant Featherstone, executive officer of the gunboat, was not, however, impatient. In fact, he stood at the rail, aft, a pretty girl beside him, and both were looking down musingly at the rippling water below.

"As I was saying," drawled the lieutenant, "when-"

Just then he stopped, though he did not appear startled.

Straight up out of the watery depths shot a Carroty-topped boy, his wet skin glistening in the sun.

"Good gracious!" gasped the girl. "Where did that boy come from?"

"Say, sir," called up Eph Somers, distinguishing the lieutenant in his swift look, "where do you want the submarine boat to anchor?"

"What's that to you, young man?" called down Mr. Featherstone, bluntly.

"Oh, just this much, sir," retorted Eph, treading water, lazily; "I belong aboard the 'Benson,' and I've been sent to inquire where you want us to find our moorings."

"You from the 'Benson'?" snorted the lieutenant, incredulously. "Then where is your craft!"

"Coming, sir."

"Coming?" jeered the lieutenant "So is Christmas!"

"The 'Benson' will be here first, sir," retorted Eph, splashing, then blowing a stream of water from his mouth. "The 'Benson,' sir, is due here in from twenty to thirty seconds!"

"What's that?" demanded the naval officer, sharply. Then a queer look came into his face as a suspicion of the truth flashed into his mind. He was about to speak when his feminine companion pointed, crying:

"What can that commotion mean out there?" There was a little flurry in the waters, then a parting as something dull-colored loomed slowly up.

Barely a hundred feet away from the port rail of the gunboat the new submarine boat, "Benson," rose into sight.

Eph Somers had left the craft, while still below surface, by means of the clever trick worked out by Jack Benson and his comrades, as described in "The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip."

Almost instantly the manhole cover was thrown open. Jack Benson, natty as a tailor's model, in his newest uniform, stepped out on deck, waving his hand to the gunboat.

"You'll have to consider that we got you, won't you, sir?" shouted the young submarine captain.

Then, both on shore and on the decks of many craft, a realization of what had happened dawned in the minds of thousands of people at about the same instant. A great, combined cheer shot up-a cheer that was a vocal cyclone!