"True for you," put in Frenchy smartly. "But you don't get any fun out of your danger. We do. And we get promotion and steadily increased pay and a chance to get up in the world."

"Sure!" broke in Al. "Some day we're all going to win gold stripes; aren't we, fellows?"

His chums declared he was right. But one listener said doubtfully:

"You won't ever win commissions if you get sunk or blown up, on one of those blamed old iron pots."

"Say!" put in Ikey Rosenmeyer hotly, "you fellows won't get no advance in rating at all, and you may get blown up any time. We've got something to work for, we have!"

"We've got money to work for," declared one of the munition workers.

"Oi, oi!" sneered Ikey. "What's money yet?" A sneer which vastly amused his chums, for Ikey's inborn love for the root of all evil was well known.

As the group stood talking, along came a man, walking briskly from the direction the Seacove boys had come in their automobile. Two or three of the munition workers spoke to the man, who was broad-shouldered, walked with a brisk military step, and was heavily bewhiskered.

Whistler stopped talking to a possible candidate for the blue uniform of the Navy, and looked after this stranger.

"Who is he?" he asked.

"That's Blake. Works in our laboratory. Nice fellow," was the reply.

"Oh! I didn't know but he was one of the men guarding the dam," Whistler murmured.

"Shucks! there aren't any guards up there. There are soldiers here at the factories, though."

"Is that so?" questioned Whistler. "Where's he been, do you suppose?"

"Who? Blake?"

"That man," said young Morgan grimly.

"Oh, he's a bug on natural history, or the like. Always tapping rocks with a hammer, or hunting specimens, or botanizing. Great chap. Hasn't been here in Elmvale long. But everybody likes him."

Phil made no further comment aloud, but to himself he said:

"He wasn't botanizing through that field-gla.s.s; or knocking specimens off of rocks. His interest was centered on the face of the dam. I wonder why?"

For the military looking man, called Blake, was the individual he and his friends had seen in the bushes as they drove along the Upper Road, and who had seemed desirous of being un.o.bserved by the pa.s.sers-by.

CHAPTER III

THE WATER WHEEL

Phil Morgan was no more suspicious by nature than his chums. Merely a thought had come into his mind that had not come into theirs; and he disliked to be annoyed by anything in the nature of an unsolved problem.

He always wanted to know why.

In this particular case he wished to know why the man called Blake had tried to hide himself in the clump of bushes beside the Upper Road when the automobile load of boys had come along and caught him examining the face of the Elmvale Dam through a field-gla.s.s.

It was through a break in the trees that partly masked the dam the man had been looking, and Whistler knew that the spot in which he was interested must be directly beside the overflow of the dam--where the water splashed down into the rocky river bed.

Whistler did not lose interest in the attempt to inspire some of the factory workers to enlist in the Navy, and he worked just as hard as his mates all through the noon hour. But the puzzle connected with the man named Blake continued to peck at his mind like an insistent chick trying to get out of its sh.e.l.l.

Hans Hertig's desire to get some of his old friends to enlist bore some fruit. Three men promised to go down to the enlistment bureau on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, when they had a half holiday.

The Seacove party then wanted to go to a dining-room for dinner; but Whistler excused himself. He was hungry enough; but he "had other fish to fry," he whispered to Torrance.

"Come around by the Upper Road--same way we got here," directed Whistler. "I'll meet you at the bridge. Wait if I'm not there."

"What is the matter with you, Whistler?" demanded Al.

But although Morgan went away without making answer, he knew that his chum would do as he was asked, and bluff off the others when they asked questions, too.

Philip Morgan hurried past the factories and the few houses which lay in this direction. The land near the dam which had been built across the valley was so sterile that few people lived in this neighborhood.

Up on the ridges, on either side, were farms; but this was a wild piece of scrub at the foot of the dam. One could jump a rabbit in it, or get up a flock of quail at almost any time during the hunting season.

Like most boys of Seacove, as well as Elmvale, Whistler was familiar with this stretch of untamed ground and plunged into it with full knowledge of its tangled brier patches and rough quarries. He started diagonally for the dam, and in a brief time came to the edge of the shallow channel, which now carried the overflow of the huge reservoir behind the dam down to the cove.

As he followed this stream, he could not help thinking of the possibility of a break occurring in the high wall of masonry which loomed ahead of him. If there should be any undiscovered weakness in the wall! Or if an enemy should sink a charge of dynamite, or some other high explosive, at the base of the dam and blow a hole through it!

He did not see any one moving about the dam either above or below. He knew that on the ridge, level with the top of the barrier, lived a man they called the dam superintendent. He sometimes walked across the embankment, from end to end; a privilege forbidden to others.

But Whistler was quite sure that this dam superintendent seldom went to the foot of the wall, or examined the face of it for any break in the stonework. Of course, the dam had stood secure for so many years that it seemed improbable that it would fail in any part now.

But Whistler Morgan was not considering any leakage of the water through the masonry which might endanger the foundation of the dam. Such seepage must have shown itself long ago if the barrier had not been properly constructed.

It was of a sudden, unexpected, and treacherous blow-out that the young sailor was thinking. That man in the bushes, who had seemed so desirous of hiding from the pa.s.sers-by and whose interest in the face of the dam had been so marked, puzzled Phil and excited his suspicions.

Blake. And Blake was an English name! He looked about as much like an Englishman as he, Whistler, looked like d.i.n.kelspiel!

"I have seen plenty of Britishers," thought the young fellow, "and not one of them ever looked like this chemist, or whatever he is. And he's a stranger--worked here only a month.

"He was not tapping rocks or getting botanical specimens over here when we fellows came along the Upper Road. His interest was in this dam--if it was at long distance. I wonder if we ought to report him to the marshal's office.

"And get him, if he's innocent of any wrongdoing, into hot water,"

Whistler added, wagging his head. "Say! that won't do. We fellows came near getting poor Seven Knott into trouble, thinking him a German spy,"

he added, referring to an incident mentioned in "Navy Boys After the Submarines."

Thus meditating he drew nearer to the place where the flashboard was down and the water poured into the rocky river bed. There were stepping stones here, so it was easy for an agile person to get across the stream.

A blue haze of spray rose from the foaming water on the rocks, and there sounded a pleasant murmur from the falling water. Birds darted in and out of this spray, fluttering their pinions in the bath thus provided.

On this side of the waterfall Whistler could discover nothing on the face of the dam nor along its foot that seemed in the least suspicious.

The masonry was perfect.