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 sh.o.r.e.

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 sc.r.a.pe 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 seash.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Jacob Farnum.

"You don't think I'm doing this just for fun, do you, sir?" asked Captain Jack, with a smile.

"No; I know you generally have an object when you do anything unusual,"

responded the shipbuilder, good-humoredly.

"You know, of course, sir, that noises sound with a good deal of exaggeration when you hear them under water?"

"Yes; of course."

"You also know that all three of us have been practicing at telegraphy a good deal during the past few weeks, because every man who follows the sea ought to know how to send and receive wireless messages at need."

"Yes; I know that, Benson."

"Well, sir, I guess that the lead has been hitting the top of the 'Farnum's' hull, and I've been tapping out the signal-"

"The signal, 'Come up-rush!'" broke in Hal, with an odd smile.

"Right-o," nodded Jack Benson.

"How on earth did _you_ know what the signal was, Hastings?" demanded Mr.