He crossed the river bed, leaping from stone to stone, and stepped up so close to the falling water that the spray splashed him. It was somewhere about here, he thought, that the man, Blake, had focused his field-gla.s.s from the roadside.

There was absolutely nothing out of the way here that he could see. The brush was kept cleared out at the foot of the dam for a dozen feet or so; there seemed to be no cover here. Not a stone had been overturned along this cleared path.

The water splashed and bubbled at the foot of the fall. Did it seem to splash more vigorously just here at the edge of the pool, hidden by the spray in part, and partly by the overhang of a great rock on which Whistler stood?

The observant youth stooped, then knelt beside the stream. The rock was wet and his garments were fast becoming saturated. But he paid no attention to this.

There was something down there in the pool, at its edge, struggling beneath the surface. Not a fish, of course!

Suddenly he thrust in his hand, wetting his sleeve to the elbow. Quickly he made sure that his suspicion was correct. There was some kind of water wheel whirling down there.

He moved a flat stone which seemed to have lain for ages in its present position. Yet under that stone was the end of the wheel's axle with cogwheels rigged to pa.s.s on the power engendered by the wheel to some mechanical contrivance not yet placed.

Whistler returned the flat rock back to its former position, and moved slowly back from the place on hands and knees. Then he stood up and looked all around to see if he had been observed. Particularly did he look through the break in the trees toward the spot where Blake, the stranger, had stood when Whistler and his friends had first spied him.

There was n.o.body in sight as far as the young fellow could see. He moved back into the shelter of a clump of brush. He heard an automobile chugging up from the village and believed Al and the others were approaching the bridge where he had asked his chum to wait for him.

But he lingered a bit. He was deeply moved by his discovery. This was no boy's plaything. The mechanism was the effort of a mature mind, perhaps the result of inventive genius of high quality.

Some inventor might be secretly experimenting with water power here; and if Whistler told of his discovery he might be doing the unknown a grave wrong.

Yet Blake's peculiar actions and the fact that the foot of the dam had been chosen for the experiment troubled the young fellow vastly.

There was nothing along the wall, as far as he could see, or upon its face, that excited Whistler's further suspicion. Just that little water wheel under the rock whirling and splashing by the power of the falling stream. It was perfectly innocent in itself; yet Philip Morgan had never been more excited and troubled in his life.

He went slowly back to the road and found the car waiting on the bridge.

The other boys were loud in their demands as to what he had been doing, and Frenchy and Ikey did their best to pump information out of him.

"What for did you go up there to the dam yet?" demanded Ikey.

"Cat's fur, to make kittens' breeches," declared Whistler. "Because I couldn't get any dog fur. Now do you know?"

And this was all the satisfaction there was to be got out of their leader at this particular time.

CHAPTER IV

S. P. 888

The result of the boys' campaign for recruits to the Navy was very encouraging. They had been to places besides Elmvale; and several of their old friends in Seacove were getting into one branch or another of the service.

Many of the young men in the neighborhood, of course, were of draft age; but, being longsh.o.r.e bred, they naturally preferred salt water service.

So they enlisted before the time came for them to answer the call of their several draft boards.

The interest of our four friends, and of Seven Knott even, was not entirely centered in this patriotic duty of urging others into the service. Their release from duty might end any day. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances the chum would have been a.s.signed before this to some patrol vessel, or the like, until their own ship, the _Colodia_, made port.

Mr. Minnette, however, was trying to place them on the _Kennebunk_, the new superdreadnaught, for a short cruise. If he succeeded the friends might be obliged to pack their kits and leave home again at almost any hour. The _Kennebunk_ was fitting out in a port not fifty miles from Seacove.

Meanwhile the chums were "having the time of their young sweet lives,"

Al Torrance observed more than once. The home folks had never before considered these rather harum-scarum boys of so much importance as now that they were in the Navy and becoming real "Old Salts." From Doctor Morgan down to Ikey's youngest brother the relatives and friends of the quartette treated them with much consideration.

To tell the truth it had not been patriotism that had carried Ikey Rosenmeyer and his friends into the Navy. At that time the United States was not in the war, and the four friends had thought little of the pros and cons of the world struggle.

They thought they had had enough school, and there was no steady and congenial work for them about Seacove. Entering the Navy had been a lark in the offing.

As soon as they had joined, they found that they had entered another school, and one much more severe and thorough than the Seacove High School. They were learning something pretty nearly all the time, both in the training school and aboard the _Colodia_. And there was much to learn.

However, Whistler and Al took the work more seriously than their younger mates. They were studying gunnery, and hoped to get into the gun crew of the _Kennebunk_ for practice if they were fortunate enough to cruise on that ship. Just at present Frenchy and Ikey Rosenmeyer were more engaged in getting all the fun possible out of existence.

The thing that delighted the latter most was the way in which his father treated him. Mr. Rosenmeyer had been a stern parent, and had opposed Ikey's desire to enlist in the Navy. He always declared he needed the boy to help in the store and to take out orders. Ikey had got so that he fairly hated the store and its stock in trade. Pigs feet and sauerkraut and dill pickles were the bane of his life.

Now that he was at home on leave, Mr. Rosenmeyer would not let Ikey help at all in the store. If a customer came in, the fat little storekeeper heaved himself up from his armchair and bade Ikey sit still.

"Nein! It iss not for you, Ikey. Don't bodder 'bout the store yet. We haf changed de stock around, anyvay, undt you could not find it, p'r'aps, vot de lady vants. Tell us again, Ikey, apout shootin' de camouflage off de German raider-poat, de _Graf von Posen_. Mebby-so de lady ain't heardt apout it yet. I didn't see it in de paper meinselluf."

So Ikey, thus urged, spun the most wonderful yarns regarding his adventures; and he was not obliged to "draw the long bow"; for the experiences of him and his three friends had been exciting indeed.

Mr. Rosenmeyer had become as thoroughly patriotic as he once had been pro-German. It was a great cross to him now that he could not learn to speak English properly. But German names he abhorred and German signs he would no longer allow in the store. He even put a newly-printed sign over the sauerkraut barrel which read: "Liberty Cabbage."

Into the store on a misty morning rolled Frenchy Donahue in his most p.r.o.nounced Old Salt fashion. Frenchy had acquired such a sailorish roll to his walk, that Al Torrance hinted more than once that the Irish lad could not get to sleep at night now that he was ash.o.r.e until his mother went out and threw several buckets of water against his bedroom window.

"Hey, Ikey! what you think?" called Frenchy. "Channel ba.s.s are running.

Whistler and Torry are going out in the _Sue Bridger_. What d'you know about that? Bridger's let 'em have his cat for the day. Never was known to do such a thing before," and Frenchy chuckled. "Oh, boy! aren't we having things soft just now? Want to go fishing, Ikey?" Ikey favored his friend with a sly wink, but only said crisply:

"I don't know about it. I was going to wash the store windows. Where are Whistler and Torry going?"

"As far as Blue Reef. They say the ba.s.s are schoolin' out there."

"They'd better be on the lookout for subs, as far out as the Reef," Ikey said solemnly. "I don't believe they've got this coast half patrolled.

We don't often see one of those chasers in the cove here."

"Mebbe we'll catch a submarine instead of ba.s.s," remarked Frenchy.

"You petter go along mit your friends in dot catboat, Ikey," said Mr.

Rosenmeyer, who was listening with both ears and his eyes wide open. "If there iss one of them German submarines in dese waters idt shouldt be known yet. Ain't that right?"

"Yes. We'd have to report it, Papa, to the naval authorities," admitted Ikey seriously.

"Vell, you go right along den," urged his father. "Nefer mindt yet de winders. I can get a winder washer easy."

"Well, if you don't mind, Papa," said Ikey, with commendable hesitancy.

"Come along, Ikey," urged Frenchy under his breath. "And be sure you bring along your submarine tackle--I mean your ba.s.s rod," and he rolled out of the store, chuckling to himself.

"Undt take a lunch, Ikey!" cried Mr. Rosenmeyer after his son. "Ham, undt bologna, undt cheese, undt there's some fine dill pickles----"